I gently patted her back and apologized, pretending to be sympathetic. But I really was. Often, I felt comforted by how shallow her problems seemed. Arrogantly, I suppose I always had this idea that Chelsea’s issues were quite lightweight in comparison to my own. Being involved in her life this way offered something of a reprieve from things. Her world felt like tranquil waters; life’s darker facets were merely diluted when they fell into her depths; her story was an upward trajectory, and I always imagined that things like sadness and anxiety and depression were like seasons for her, that she
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