After a moment’s reflection, she says, “I understand your point, but I’m not sure you fully understand mine. I don’t want to patronize you, but I think some things require being said, even though I know that you, probably more than most people, already know the truth of what I’m about to say. You’re a fortunate person, Ella. You’re intelligent, attractive, and talented. You’re financially secure, and you have people in your life who love you. Many, many people do not have even one of those things, and you have them all. Now, I know, there’s much more to your life than that. You’ve also experienced suffering that is extreme. You lost your mother at a young age and then your sister in the most horrible circumstance imaginable. And to top it all off, you experienced something extremely traumatic: having to fight for your life and taking a life to save your own. Now a mother figure—Lauren—has been murdered. So, no, I’m not going to tell you that any of that was normal. Like the blessings you have, the . . . curses, as you call them, also seem to be abundant. And I’m also not going to tell you that they balance themselves out. Life doesn’t work that way. Some people get many more blessings than curses, others get the opposite. You’re still young. That means I’m both delighted, and sorry, to say that many more blessings and curses will come your way. And there’s no way of knowing whether, when you take your last breath, you’ll have accumulated more of one than the other. All you can do, all any of us can do, is be happy when happiness is to be had, and suffer through the tragedies as best we can.”

I’ve given myself this little speech before too. All those starving people all over the world, or those in chronic pain or who are blind or refugees . . . the list of those who have it much worse than I do is endless.

The counterargument is that I only experience my own life. So while others most certainly have it worse than I do, that reality is true of everyone on the planet except one person. Should the second-most-tragic figure on earth not complain because another person is suffering more? And when a billionaire or movie star loses a child, isn’t his or her loss just as wrenching as anyone else’s?

“Gabriel has been asking about the apartment,” I say.

The segue to a different topic is sharp enough that I expect Allison to call me on it, but she lets its slide. She likes it when we discuss Gabriel, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Tell me more about that,” she says.