In my line of work, I get to meet people at their most vulnerable. I don’t take that time to probe. I try to listen, offer something from experience if it helps, and if I can, take a little weight off whatever they’re carrying. Sometimes that’s the whole job. Just making the burden feel a bit lighter.
Today I met Aristotle. We got to talking about his friend, and somewhere in the conversation it came out that he’d been the one paying for things. Not the biological family. Him. They aren’t related by blood, and yet there he was, showing up in the way you’d expect a brother to.
It reminded me of my uncle. He has a circle like that too, friends he treats like his own family, no asterisk attached. When I’m around them, no matter how hard they try to make me feel included, I don’t quite feel like I belong. I don’t say that as a complaint. I just don’t have the history. I wasn’t there for the hard years, the fights, the trouble they got into together. I only get to see them happy, which might honestly be the better seat.
They tell stories when we’re together. About how difficult things used to be, the good stretches, the messes they made and cleaned up together. You can hear how long it took to build what they have.
I wonder sometimes if straight friendships carry this same kind of devotion. The kind that shows up with money when it counts, not just sympathy. My uncle used to tell me he considers himself lucky that way. He got to choose his family.
I hope more people get this. The kind of support that doesn’t run out, chosen or otherwise. Alejandro is one lucky fellow, indeed.
