Asal was 6 months younger than me. She would have turned 51 this year, but instead she will always be 36. Friendships are strange like that. For reasons I never fully understood, she really wanted to be my friend. She saw something in me that she felt she was missing, something she needed in her life. Maybe I gave her a sense of legitimacy. Maybe I made her feel more anchored. I don’t know. I just know that the connection mattered to her, and eventually, it mattered to me too