Active Fire
- Hampton Law Firm ⚖️
- Jul 14
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 19
I have two friends who are older than me and both attorneys. There is nothing nefarious here. They are legitimate, solid friends, mentors, and longtime family friends. Outside of my father, they are probably the two people in the legal profession I trust most.
They are also completely different people.
One of them is going to tell me the truth. He will absolutely say, “Judith, I think this is a terrible idea. I think this is going to end badly, and I think you are probably going to get hurt.”
And then he is going to look at me, realize from my face that I have already made the decision, and say, “Okay. What are we doing?”
If I pointed across a room and said, “Look at that man over there with the pretty blue eyes. I think I want to talk to him,” this friend would probably tell me he sees several potential problems with my plan, has serious concerns about the likely outcome, and would strongly advise against proceeding.
However, if I chose to proceed anyway, he would help me get the man's phone number.
That's the kind of friend he is.
He is the friend you call at midnight when you are already in the crisis. Not considering a crisis. Not weighing your options. The options have been weighed. The decision has been made. The match has been lit, and I am standing on the bridge watching the flames catch.
He isn't coming to scold me. He isn't coming to judge me. He isn't asking why I lit the match or whether perhaps we should discuss healthier ways of processing conflict.
He is getting in the car.
He is going to find me, look at the burning bridge, and say, “Well. I assume we're committed to this now.”
Then he is staying on the bridge with me.
If I jump, he's jumping too. Not because he thinks jumping was a good idea. He has already clearly stated for the record that jumping was a terrible idea. But I jumped, so now we have a new problem, and the new problem is getting me to shore.
My other friend is every bit as loyal. He would come in a heartbeat. He would fight just as hard for me. But he has substantially more interest in preventing the original disaster.
He is the friend who wants to sit down.
He wants facts. He wants a timeline. He would like everyone to stop moving while he determines how the hell we got here and whether there is still time to avoid criminal charges, professional consequences, emotional devastation, or whatever particular category of bullshit I have wandered into this time.
He is not going to hold my hand while I knowingly make a terrible decision.
He is going to take the match away from me.
“We're not doing this.”
And the funniest part is that these two men are also friends with each other. The three of us have known each other long enough that, somewhere along the way, without a meeting, written policy, or formal vote, we apparently developed an emergency operating system for Judith.
The first one handles active fire.
I call him when I am already on the bridge and the match has left my hand. He arrives, stays with me through the explosion, jumps when I jump, and somehow gets me to shore.
Then, once he has confirmed that I am alive, he calls the other one.
“Okay. She's your problem now.”
And that's when the second one shows up with the metaphorical blanket.
He gets me in the car. He gets me warm. He starts asking the questions I was absolutely not prepared to answer six hours earlier. He talks me through what happened, helps me figure out where we are, and starts guiding me home.
Then he fights every damn bear we encounter along the way.
I was talking about this the other day, and it occurred to me how incredibly specific these two friendships have become. One of them loves me enough to stand beside me in the consequences of a decision he warned me not to make. The other loves me enough to physically plant himself between me and the next bad decision and say, “No. You've had enough adventure for one week.”
And somehow, I need both.
Because there is a version of me most people know. She is capable. She is loud. She makes decisions. She handles emergencies. She answers the phone when everybody else's life is falling apart and usually has some idea what to do next.
These two know the other version.
They know that when I call one of them at midnight, sometimes the important part isn't what I am saying. It is that I called him.
They know the difference between Judith telling a ridiculous story and Judith talking too fast because if she stops talking she may actually have to feel what is happening.
They know when the joke is funny.
They also know when the joke is buying time.
And I think there is something terrifying about being known that well.
There is no performance left. No convincing them I am fine. No giving them the polished version after I have cleaned the blood off the floor and figured out how to make the story entertaining.
Sometimes they see it while it is still bleeding.
One of them has seen me standing on the bridge with the match in my hand and understood that grabbing it from me would probably only make me run farther.
So he stays.
The other has met us on the shore enough times to know that surviving the jump does not mean I am okay.
So he takes me home.
Maybe that is what I was trying to explain when we were talking about them the other day. They do not love me the same way, and they do not protect me the same way. One protects my right to make my own decisions, even when he is painfully aware that I may be about to break my own heart.
The other protects the parts of me that are sometimes too exhausted, too angry, too hurt, or too deep inside my own head to recognize another cliff when I see one.
I need the friend who will tell me the bridge is a bad idea but won't leave me standing on it alone.
And I need the friend waiting on the shore who is going to wrap me in a blanket, put me in the car, and spend the entire ride home explaining exactly why I am never allowed near a bridge or an unsupervised box of matches again.
Between the two of them, I have apparently acquired one complete crisis-management system.
But the older I get, the more I understand what a rare thing that actually is.
To have people who do not only love the version of you who makes it home.
People who can look directly at the worst night, the worst decision, the worst version of the story and never confuse the wreckage with the person standing in the middle of it.
One gets me out alive.
The other gets me home.
And neither one has ever made me earn the right to be worth coming for.
Judith L. Hampton
Attorney At Law
Hampton Law Firm
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