A small story:

I don't have a lot of friends. This is not some weird request for a hug. I'm a self-contained introvert, an only child of only children who liked it that way; I have exactly as many friends as I want.

I suspect I am about to lose one of the few I have.

The last few months have been stressful for people. Stress changes the brain, literally rewires it. Our frontal lobes are currently being run by meth-addled howler monkeys. When an existential threat can come from anywhere, everything is a threat.

I understand this.

My friend is afraid. She's afraid of the changes, and the anger, and the chaos. She worries for herself, for her children. Her streets seem unsafe to her. She feels vulnerable and she sees no path to feeling safe again.

I understand this.

She does not see the protests as the outpouring of 400 years of pain and inequity; she sees criminals.

She - a person who, like I, has benefitted from the status quo - doesn't understand that if "Good cops" don't stand up against bad policing, there are no "good cops."

I understand, but I do not agree.

She is a highly intelligent, kind, educated woman.

She's also wrong. Her fear and her panic are driving her further and further into her wrongness. We talk or, more accurately, she talks and I listen. Her sentences come in a breathless rush.

I use all the skills I've picked up in certain church basements and when I worked on the APLA hotline to just listen to her and I don't try to dissuade her; when you think your family's life is at stake, you're not up for spirited debate.

I keep hoping for a glimpse of my old friend. I'm starting to think one won't come. I try to decide what my moral obligation is.

Do I yell, to try to wake her from this fear-induced stupor, dragging her towards beliefs I know she never had, which will make her defensive?

Do I reason with her, knowing the whole meth-addled howler monkeys running things right now?

Do I just let her say this stuff, wallowing in the hypocrisy of my silence?

Or do I give her the dignity of what amounts to an exit interview?

Trauma changes people. Sometimes, it changes very similar people in very different ways. We both think we're right about what's going on right now. Our friendship might not last until we find out.