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Friday, August 28, 2009

How odd it was that friends could be the source of so much pleasure and solace, Wendy thought, with their constant assurances that you were all in it together, lamenting lost opportunities, laughing at inside jokes. At the same time, they could devastate you by doing nothing more than going about the business of their lives, lives that had no direct bearing on yours. They weren't family members. You didn't generally have sex with them. You didn't generally work in the same office as them, either. Yet is was impossible not to see your lot in direct relation to theirs - impossible, therefore, not to feel defensive, and even devastated when they did things you hadn't done, or simply did them differently (and now it was too late for you to go back and do them again).