HeartStrung

I’m sitting on her bed, leaned back against a pillow with my legs tucked up near me. She is telling me about friendship and my heart is breaking open. Words tumble from her mouth in a flood of breath and I think,  I don’t know how to help. Memories of my youth fill my head along with my sisters’ voice. Just this summer, when she visited, she sat on my couch and talked about growing up without friends. I saw. Being only a year younger, I remember…yet somehow the depth, the severity, escaped me then. I was so busy following people around, pretending that I was more outgoing, more comfortable, more of everything I wasn’t, to notice how deep my sisters’ pain was. My mom must have cried a lot , I think now. There I was, a world of trouble and anger and rebellion, so self-absorbed and trying to find my own way. And there was my sister, brilliant and kind, but a type of lonely that few understand. The world can be so cruel. My daughter is beautiful. She excels in her classes. She...