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My eyes landed on Richard’s. He glared at me like he knew my dirty little secret. I shifted back to the magazine, first to the left side, at the woman.

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I never expected to fall in love with my best friend, but I’m so glad I did.

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It’s not a one-step solution, it’s forgetting and investing time in other people, it’s realising that you didn’t think about them yesterday and you were happy.

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By contrast, my other childhood dream of owning a “house car”—my fancy term for a TRAILER—was and continues to be a very realistic and attainable goal. Dream small and it’s rare you’ll ever feel disappointed.

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Drinking is fun. It’s comforting. It helps you meet people. Still, sometimes you miss guzzling vodka out of plastic bottles in the same way that you miss the first person who touched you.

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Some were missing limbs, that one unfortunate soul was facially charred and the rest had their hair or tiny plastic noses shorn off. It was basically a Barbie concentration camp. How do you see that from your child and not ask a few pressing questions?

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Gelling the baby hairs that frame my face and sculpting them with a toothbrush. Brown lipliner and white eyeliner. Listening to Brandy, writing song-poems. Drafting acceptance speeches for the Grammys I’m going to win. Practicing my autograph. Writing five-page letters to heartthrob celebrities who are twice my age.