On a memory
“You have to believe in something.” said a buddy who was apparently atheist, agnostic, or at least bitterly opposed to the Church. We were in our late teens, and I had just pretty much failed with a wanted girlfriend.
It was late at night in a one-on-one conversation. I had said I had psychiatric problems, and he said treat me like your psychiatrist; he said my troubled youth may have been a good thing. I suppose he meant it made me more sensitive as I got older.
He said he had respect for me, maybe more than other friends.
They call people like he was “frenemies” now. I think it means someone who is willing to hang out with you and communicate with you but may be stabbing you in the back through gossip or potentially physically. “Et tu Brute?”
A French teacher spoke of “false friends” or false cognates, when French words seem a lot like English but are actually importantly different.
Never really spoke to the old buddy again. We went to a movie together a few years later because we had a common friend, but we never really spoke again after that, and he pretty much ignored what I had to say as we drove to and from the film, called Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood.
Life goes on.