Excerpt from "A Different Kind of Friend"

You know me.

You fucking know me.

Or maybe you don’t. At least not anymore. Hell, a person spends that many years trying to forget someone and they’re bound to have a little success. At least I’d like to hope so. Wouldn’t you? I’m not talking about the forgetting part. I mean the success part. It’s nice to think you’re entitled to some level of success if you try hard at something for long enough. But listen to me now, rambling like an idiot. All of this is to say that you know me. At least you should.

You probably don’t remember the first time you met me, and I don’t blame you. Few do. But there’ve been times when you looked me straight in the eye and spoke to me, sometimes through a haze of gin or in one of those moments when you were so fucking down you were thinking of ending it all. I was there, and you knew me then.

There were so many times you thought things were getting better, that you were getting better. You’re such a sucker for fantasy. Always so quick to think, Oh geeze, if I could just get to point “X” I’d be happy. Of course you know that’s a pathetic lie. But here’s something you probably don’t know. I feel for you. I honestly want you to find something in all of this. But don’t ever expect me to wish you happiness. That’s one thing I’ll never do, because happiness is impossible and wishing you happiness would only make me an enabler. I’m not here to point you down the same old empty road that’s always led you back to this place. I’m a different kind of friend.

You spend so much time these days coming up with all these bullshit ideas about who you are. Sometimes you think so highly of yourself it’s sickening, and of course those moments are always offset by the ones where you think you’d be better off dead. But the warm, hypothermic truth is that you’re not anyone or anything in particular, and even if you were it wouldn’t matter.

Do you remember the time you were chatting up that guy at Boondoggles? He asked you if you were afraid of dying, and you told him you assumed you’d already died years before.

The word patience comes from the same root as the word passion. I’m going to need you to think about that for a while.