No one arrives unbroken.
We all drag something behind us—
a limp of the spirit,
a private ache,
a habit of wounding and being wounded in return.
Those who claim otherwise are either young,
or lying with remarkable confidence.
There is no such thing as easy company.
There are only varieties of difficulty:
the silent sort who corrodes a room by absence,
the volatile sort who shatters it by noise,
the charming sort who costs you years
before the invoice is presented in full.
So when—by some statistical aberration—
you meet a person who stays.
Not clinging.
Not performing loyalty like a public virtue.
But staying with the unglamorous labour of understanding—
listening past your first explanation,
returning after the argument has cooled into embarrassment,
choosing clarification over theatrics—
recognise the gravity of the moment.
This is not romance.
This is eternity.
Such people do not fall from the sky.
They are forged—
by loss, by disappointment, by having once loved foolishly
and learned, at cost,
how not to repeat the crime.
Do not let the crowd dismantle this.
Friends who mistake familiarity for wisdom,
family who sanctify tradition over truth,
voices that say blood is thicker
as though viscosity were a moral argument.
And above all—
do not let your ego,
that pampered tyrant,
convince you that solitude is superiority
and pride is dignity.
Ego prefers applause to peace.
It would rather be right than reconciled,
admired than understood.
It will advise you to walk away
at the precise moment you ought to sit still.
Consider the examples we are never taught to examine:
The man who abandons steadiness
for the intoxication of novelty,
only to discover that novelty has no memory.
The woman who confuses intensity with intimacy,
mistaking chaos for depth,
and calls boredom what is merely calm.
The family elder who vetoes happiness
because it does not resemble their own.
The friend who whispers doubt
because your growth threatens their stagnation.
These are not villains.
They are simply unexamined people—
and unexamined people are extraordinarily destructive.
Growth with another human being
is not a montage of shared holidays
or curated laughter.
It is the slow education of your worst instincts,
the patient redrafting of old reflexes,
the mutual agreement
not to weaponise each other’s wounds.
To grow with someone
means consenting to be seen mid-failure
and choosing to remain intelligible rather than impressive.
It means arguments that end in clarity,
not victory.
Silences that heal,
not punish.
This is rare.
Not poetic-rare.
Statistically rare.
Civilisationally endangered.
Most people want companionship
without the discipline it demands.
They want to be loved
without being known.
They want permanence
without responsibility.
So if you find the opposite—
someone who stays curious about you
after the mystery has worn thin,
who corrects you without contempt,
who does not flee when your shadow enters the room—
do not treat this as replaceable.
Do not test it for sport.
Do not sacrifice it to pride.
Do not confuse discomfort with incompatibility.
Because real connection is not loud.
It does not beg for witnesses.
It survives quietly,
like a well-built bridge
most noticed only after it collapses.
And when it is gone,
you will understand—too late—
that real was rare,
and rarity, once squandered,
does not return out of sympathy.