My friend is 21 years younger. I wanted her skin; she wanted my perspective.

The author is friends with someone 21 years younger than her. Courtesy of the author I became close with a woman 21 years younger through an online writing class. At first, her youth made me more self-conscious about my own aging. Our friendship helped me see my age and life experience as something to value. Three years ago, when I met someone 21 years my junior in an online class, I never thought we'd become close. Each week in a writing class , we filled the video call with highly personal details about our lives as we learned how to tell our stories. We spilled our emotions in front of dozens of strangers and eventually branched off into our own smaller writing group, bridging the divide between New York and Chicago , where we each lived.