Romance was what I’d always felt most consumed by, but my relationships with women were the ones I’d trusted more. They built and rebuilt my inner architecture. The version of myself made possible by conversations with friends was the self I most readily recognized—the self that demanded the fewest contortions. My close friends were not all versions of my mother. Each was no one but herself. But with all of them, I found a version of the safety my mother first introduced me to: You don’t have to keep earning me. I’m here.
