Opinions should only come from people who are living the life you want.
Everyone else should be a spectator.
But spectators are rarely quiet.
They sit comfortably in the ruins of their own choices and shout instructions across the fence about how someone else should rebuild theirs.
Turn left.
Leave.
Stay.
Forgive.
Walk away.
Try harder.
Give it another chance.
Don’t give it another chance.
Everybody knows exactly what you should do when they don’t have to live with what happens afterward.
Here is mine.
You should do what is right for you.
And you should, by all means, stop giving advice while living in a dirty house.
I said what I said.
There is something almost romantic about the audacity of a person standing knee-deep in their own wreckage, pointing toward yours as if they have been appointed keeper of the map.
Darling, your roof is leaking.
Perhaps climb down from my chimney.
Mind your own business.
Stay in your own lane.
Because at the end of the day, this one is going to do exactly what this one wants to do.
I have never understood advice disguised as friendship.
I’m only telling you because I care.
No.
Sometimes you’re telling me because my choices make you uncomfortable.
Sometimes you’re telling me because you need me to choose what you would choose so your own decisions feel justified.
And sometimes you’re simply nosy.
Caring looks different.
Caring hands someone a mirror and lets them decide whether they can live with the reflection.
Caring says, Look carefully. Make sure this is what you want.
Then caring shuts its mouth.
Because if your friend looks into that mirror, sees every crack, every shadow, every beautiful and terrible possibility waiting behind them, and chooses differently than you would, friendship does not suddenly expire.
You don’t get to become cruel because someone ignored your advice.
You don’t get to punish them with I told you so.
You don’t get to sit quietly waiting for their life to collapse so you can feel intelligent.
That’s not friendship.
That’s ego wearing a sympathy dress.
People opinion me all the time.
I’ve developed a filing system.
The suggestion has been noted and filed under Number 13.
Nobody knows exactly what happens in Number 13.
There is a locked iron door at the end of a dark hallway. No handle on this side. Occasionally something scratches from within.
We don’t ask questions.
The opinions go in.
They do not come back out.
Because I am far too busy living my life to spend much time worrying about what some half-wit nobody who has never walked a single day in my shoes thinks I should be doing with them.
You don’t know what the shoes cost.
You don’t know where they’ve been.
You don’t know how far they have walked in the dark.
And you certainly don’t know where they’re going next.
Suggestions have always fascinated me anyway.
They so often come from people who refuse to take their own.
People will hand you instructions for leaving a burning building while sitting comfortably inside one of their own.
They’ll tell you how to love while sleeping beside someone they hate.
Tell you how to spend money while drowning in debt.
Tell you how to find happiness while complaining from sunrise until bedtime.
Tell you what you deserve while accepting far less themselves.
Maybe that’s why other people’s lives become so interesting.
It’s easier to stare through someone else’s windows than clean your own.
Easier to inspect the dust on their furniture than admit yours has been gathering for years.
So before you tell me what I should do, go home.
Turn on every light.
Pull back every curtain.
Walk slowly through every room.
Look beneath the beds.
Open the closets.
Inspect the things you’ve shoved into corners because company wasn’t supposed to see them.
Stand in front of your own mirror.
Stay there awhile.
And when your house is finally clean, your ghosts have been introduced by name, and you’re living a life I would actually want…
Come find me.
Maybe then I’ll ask what you think.
Until then?
Fuck your opinion already.
Number 13 is getting full.
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