I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you? - Stephen King

A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing. Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but. If the condition had been new, or more localized, he might have understood, but loneliness both encompassed his life and overreached it.

"Frannie," he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes. "What, Stuart?
" "Do you think... do you think people ever learn anything?" She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue. "I don't know," she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more, to illuminate her first response, and could only say it again: I don't know.

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.