Memory is funny. Since my head injury, so many memories start out vivid, then get a little hazy, then fade into the mist, then they're gone. Completely...like the event never happened.

My friend Robin is here visiting now. She was my best friend for years and years, and then she moved to Indiana and I moved to Arizona and we didn't see each other for ten years. But it's like all that time never happened. I remember all those years we lived down the road from each other. I remember her parents and her husbands and her children, where we were when such-and-such happened...like it just happened. And I have trouble remembering last week.

She looks the same. It's funny to think about all that time. If you can't remember a decade, did it really happen? If a decade falls in the woods and no one remembers it...?

I remember the day I came out to her, and she nervously came out to me...as a Wiccan. We were each so worried that the other would be appalled. It's funny how your own secrets seem so big and scary, and everyone else's seem normal and understandable. She did fine with the lesbian part, I did fine with the Wicca part, and it made us both brave enough to tell more people.

I guess that's why people need a best friend. Someone to practice being brave on, who will love you afterward.