“So, comedy may have taken me out of my feelings at times, but it helped me make them manageable, too. I made sure whatever I put in front of my face was funny, so I had no other option but to try and laugh. And even when I couldn’t laugh, making my pain into something that someone else could laugh at somehow made me feel less lonely.”

I exhale a shaky breath. “When I got home that night I cried some more, and apologized. She told me she forgave me, told me that it was okay, to forgive myself. She said that it was going to be one of our favorite stories one day because that was me. I was always going to have big feelings, and it was going to be up to me to make sure they were worth it. She told me I was going to have to learn to wear those feelings proudly, without doing damage to the things or people I love, that I’d only hurt myself in the process if I did.”

The responding sound is a combination of a cartoon villain’s laugh and a trombone, and I tell her as much.