A Difficult Conversation with a Friend

My friend is Maya. We go to school together. My friend is kind. I am happy when we eat lunch together. We are good friends because we listen to each other.

Hi Maya,

Can we talk soon? There is something I have been thinking about. When we are with our other friends, sometimes I feel quiet, and I think it is because the conversations are very fast and I cannot follow them well. I am not angry. I just want to tell you. Maybe we can think about it together. I really like our friendship, and I want it to be good for both of us.

I hope we can talk soon.

Lina

Two years ago, I had to tell my closest friend that I could not be a part of her wedding in the way she wanted. She had asked me to give a long speech, in front of two hundred people. My English was not yet good enough, and the thought of standing in front of so many people, in my second language, made me unable to sleep for a week.

It took me three weeks to tell her. I kept thinking I was making too much of it. I told myself I should just practise, and be brave, and do it for her sake. But every time I tried to practise, my mind went blank.

When I finally told her, I was sitting in her kitchen, drinking tea. I said the whole thing badly. I said I was sorry, and I felt like a bad friend, and I would understand if she was disappointed. She listened. She did not interrupt. And then she said: 'I'm so glad you told me. I had been wondering why you were so quiet about the wedding.' She asked me to read just one sentence at the dinner — one sentence I could prepare and say well. I read it. I was not perfect, but I was there.

What I learned is that the waiting was the heaviest part. The conversation, when it finally happened, was lighter than I had feared.

Last year, I lived with a friend in a shared flat for ten months. He was, by most measures, a good housemate — clean, quiet, kind to my visitors, willing to share food. But he had a habit, when he was tired, of speaking to me with a particular sharpness that I could not quite name to him while it was happening, and that I told myself, repeatedly, was not a big enough thing to mention.

It happened perhaps once a week. Always in the evening. Always when he had had a long day, which was most days. The sharpness was not insulting; it was more a kind of impatience that turned ordinary requests — could I move my coat, was the milk finished, had I taken the bin out — into small interrogations. I would feel, for an hour afterwards, faintly ashamed of having been in the kitchen at all.

For about six months, I waited. I told myself it was a small thing. I told myself he was tired and stressed at work, which was true. I told myself that mentioning it would change the atmosphere of the flat, which was, on the whole, a good atmosphere. I told myself that I was being too sensitive, which is a sentence I have, since then, become suspicious of whenever I produce it.

The conversation, when I finally had it, took about ten minutes. It went well. He had not noticed. He apologised, properly. He explained that he was, in fact, struggling at work in a way he had not told anyone, and that his sharpness was the version of his stress that came out when he was tired. We agreed that he would try to notice when he was about to slip into it, and that I would, gently, name it if I felt it happening. The flat improved.

The cost of the waiting was that I had spent six months in a flat I increasingly disliked, when ten minutes of conversation would have changed it. I have, since, been faster — not always quickly enough, but faster — to ask for the conversation that would change the thing. The waiting is almost always heavier than the saying.

About four years ago, I lived for ten months in a flat I shared with a friend I had known since university. He was, on every measurable count, a good housemate. He cleaned. He paid the rent on time. He was kind to my visitors. He made tea for me when I got home from a long day. The thing he also did, which I told myself for the first three months was not a thing, was speak to me with a particular tightness in his voice when he was tired. The tightness was not directed at me, exactly; it was directed at small inconveniences in the kitchen that I happened to have caused. Could I move my coat. Was the milk finished. Had I taken the bin out. The questions were not unreasonable. The voice was the question.

For about six months, I waited. The reasons I gave myself were the reasons one gives oneself: that he was tired, that work was hard for him, that the questions were technically fair, that mentioning it would change the atmosphere of a flat I otherwise liked. I told myself I was being too sensitive, which is a sentence I have, since then, become suspicious of whenever I produce it.

The conversation, when I finally had it, took perhaps ten minutes. It went well. He had not noticed the tightness himself; in his version, he had simply been asking ordinary questions while tired. He apologised, properly, in the way that does not include 'but'. He explained that work had been worse than he had told me, and that the tightness was the form his stress took when he could no longer keep it elsewhere. We agreed that he would try to notice the tightness as it arrived, and that I would, gently, name it if I felt it happening. The flat improved. He moved out four months later for unrelated reasons, and we are still friends.

What I have thought about since is what the six months of waiting were actually doing. The reasons I had given myself at the time were honest reasons but not, I think, accurate ones. The accurate reason, I now believe, was that I was hoping the problem would resolve itself without my needing to name it — that he would notice, or that the work stress would lift, or that I would somehow get used to it and stop minding. The waiting was, in other words, a small bet that the situation would change without me having to spend the courage that change required. The bet did not pay. The situation did not change. And the cost of the waiting was that I had spent six months in a flat I increasingly disliked, when ten minutes of conversation would have changed it.

The deeper lesson, if there is one, is that the waiting is almost always a form of hoping that responsibility for the situation lies elsewhere. Sometimes that hope is reasonable — sometimes other people do notice, and other situations do change. But the more common case is that the situation only changes when one of the parties decides, finally, to take the small public risk of naming it. I have, since, been faster — not always quickly enough, but faster — to ask for the conversation that would change the thing. I am still not as fast as I would like to be. Are you?

There is a conversation I have not yet had with my older sister. It concerns a small thing she has been doing — for a long time, possibly always — and which has, slowly and almost imperceptibly, become heavier than it should be. She refers to me, in front of our parents and the wider family, as the impractical one. She means it lightly. She has always meant it lightly. The thing has perhaps a dozen instalments a year, distributed across phone calls and dinners and the various small public moments of family life. On any individual occasion, the line is so close to a joke as to be a joke. After thirty years of it, it is closer to a description, and after closer to a description it has become, in some quiet way I am only now permitting myself to notice, the version of me that lives in family rooms.

I am writing this in a register that is recognisable. The register is the careful adult one in which a small hurt is named with precision, the speaker is generous to the person who has caused it, and the writing itself is calm enough to admit that calmness is part of the performance. I am aware, even as I produce it, that the register is doing some of the work of the avoidance. If I can describe the situation accurately enough on the page, I am, in a small way, having the conversation here rather than there. There is something faintly suspicious about that, and I would rather notice it than pretend it is not happening.

The reasons I have been giving myself for not bringing this to her are the reasons one gives oneself. I tell myself it is small. I tell myself she does not mean it. I tell myself that I am, in many measurable ways, the impractical one — that my sister's description is partly true, that she has more of certain practical capacities than I do, and that to take offence at being described accurately is the kind of move I would, in another mouth, find unattractive. I tell myself that our parents are old, and that to introduce a small family irritation now would be to spend the limited remaining shared time on a topic that is, in the larger picture of their lives, of no consequence. I tell myself, fourth and most often, that I am not sure she would receive the conversation well.

What I notice, when I am honest with myself rather than careful, is that the reasons are honest reasons but not, I think, accurate ones. The accurate reason is that I am afraid that to bring the thing up would change something between us that I cannot name in advance, and that I would rather have the slightly diminished version of the relationship I currently have than the unknown version that would follow the conversation. The waiting is, in other words, a small bet that the situation will go on being just bearable enough not to require the courage I have not yet found. I have made this bet for so long that I have begun to wonder whether the conversation is, in fact, the question, or whether the question is what kind of person makes that bet for thirty years.

I have not yet had the conversation. I do not, even now, know whether I will have it, or whether I will continue to find it slightly easier to write essays around its edges. The thing I have come to believe, slowly, is that the writing is not, in the end, a substitute for the conversation; it is, at best, a rehearsal for it, and a rehearsal is only useful if the performance is at some point going to happen. Whether it will happen, in this case, I do not yet know. What I would like to ask you, since you have read this far, is whether there is a similar conversation in your own life that the writing of this essay has, for a moment, made you remember. And whether, if there is, you are any closer than I am to having it.