New Friend

Some people enter our lives like seismic events — not randomly, but precisely, at the exact moment the old self has already begun to loosen and the new one hasn't learned its posture yet.

I made a friend. That is not a small thing to say. I can count on one hand the people I expect to know for a long time, and this person has claimed one of those fingers. I am relearning patience with them. Relearning how to be childlike. Relearning how to genuinely care — by listening, by asking the right questions. A challenge has been set before me that I take up willingly and look forward to carrying.

This is not happening in calm water. A war has taken people from me — actually taken them — and in doing so revealed the integrity of those still standing nearby, some of whom I no longer recognize.

I also am mid-career change, moving toward work that will pay me more and demand more, precisely so that on the days I am not there, I have uninterrupted time for the painting and the writing, which I cling to stubbornly, as one clings to the thing that tells you who you are.

I have grown tired, carry a specific exhaustion that comes from watching disrespect normalize itself — in friendships, in family, at work, in the culture at large. Assholes run the world right now. The honest ones, the selfless ones, are called insane. I am not insane.

I made a poor judgment once. I mistook someone for a person who had come to expand my life when in fact they had only come to disturb the foundation. When the shaking stopped they returned to people who would never ask more of them. I understand that now. Staying would have been a kind of enabling — helping them remain exactly as small as they'd chosen to be. I had dreamed of this person before I ever met them. That made the slow withdrawal painful in a way that had no emotional support. It happened the way real losses do — privately, without warmth or love.

They betrayed me during a war. Stood aside and let someone come at me, again and again, and said nothing. I haven't had anyone to talk to about it until now. It won't be my partner's burden. It won't be my new friend's inheritance walking in. So I hold it here, where it can be examined without being acted out. What I know is that honesty would fix it. They won't offer that, because shame doesn't produce courage — it produces evasion, and the particular cruelty of people who hurt you and then need you not to mention it.

I have never lied to the people I love. When they are honest with me in return, they get to stay long enough to find out I am exactly who I said I was. Those who don't take that offer lose access to something they won't find again.It is just accurate with me.

I can't be concerned with any of it. Life moves forward — new, unencumbered, carried day to day like something that actually has to be. I noticed recently that a woman in the orbit of someone I no longer think about had been looking at my Instagram. I blocked her without a second thought. He's just a pussy hound. There are a lot of those. They move through the world collecting women like proof of something. They barely leave a mark, and the world doesn't notice the absence.

C’est la vie.

Human Head (Mid-Sagittal Section)

Plastinated human specimen showing the internal anatomy of the brain, brainstem, cerebellum, nasal cavity, oral cavity, upper airway, and cervical spine in profile.

Canon R | 2026