It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk. - Miranda July

Was all this real to her? Did she think it was temporary? Or maybe that was the point of love: not to think.

He didn't call me for a few weeks. This was customary within our friendship, confide and retreat, but I wondered. I wondered if perhaps our last conversation had been an overture. Not the conversation, exactly, but the silences within it. There had been many dark pits of tea-sipping silence; looking back, I could imagine placing my hand on his hand while kneeling in one of these dark pits. And in such a pit could one even be sure what one was doing? One might seek solace in a friend and literally go inside this friend to get the solace; and the friend, being old and familiar, might give especially good solace.

She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.