Nin captures something most friendship platitudes miss: that your friends don't merely enter your existing world—they actually *call worlds into being* within you that had no potential for existence before they arrived. It's not that you were incomplete and they filled a gap; it's that meeting your closest friend activates capacities, sensibilities, and even versions of yourself that required that particular person's presence to manifest. When your oldest friend finally moves across the country, you don't just lose a companion—you lose access to the person you become in their company, which is precisely why the absence feels like erosion rather than simple distance.