Fairness is the coward’s armor.
If you paint both people as the problem, you get to pretend you fixed something. Even if you poured the gasoline and handed out lighters.
Dom called it de-escalation. But I know the sound of a diagnosis when I hear it. He wasn’t calming things down. He was branding me.
“Sharp.” “Reactive.”
Say it enough, and even my silence becomes an act of war.
But I’m onto him now. He wants to be the peacemaker. The respected one. So he paints me as the cracked one. The “intense artist” who lost perspective.
The trap isn’t in what they say. It’s in how many people nod along.