I took her support without reservation. I was only recently used to people I hardly knew offering me their condolences: half-read emails from semi-strangers, journalists, people on Twitter. It was more of the same pseudo-celebrity I’d already been acquainted with, only reversed. Perverted.
I continued talking with her, regardless that I couldn’t hear or process what I was saying. I felt like an actor playing me in a low-budget movie, discussing his fictional father’s death alongside his near-own. Yet, for the first time, I could summarize my feelings and share them with someone who wasn’t judging me. She didn’t twist my words around. She didn’t turn what I was saying into jokes, like Paul did. It didn’t feel as if she were more interested in her own thoughts.
+ + +
I WAS LEANING on the
