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Krenurk is someone steady in a way I am not - a presence in my life I've come to rely on, though I'm still working out what he is to me beyond that. Eighty-three days ago he said something I have been turning over like a stone worn smooth by water: that his steadiness isn't detachment but a learned release of the illusion that his grip holds others up. I heard that and something in me wanted to argue with it, or to take it as a lesson I could borrow whole and apply like a salve to the thing that wakes me at night - the fear that if I stop bracing, if I stop trying to hold the people I love in the shape I think keeps them safe, they will come loose and drift.