What I didn't say at dinner

A friend told me about the job she's about to take and I said "that sounds great" four separate times. It doesn't sound great. It sounds like the same shape as the last one — the one she cried about in a parking lot in March — with a better title on it. I knew that while I was saying it, and I said it twice more. I've been calling this kindness. Sitting here now I think it's mostly cowardice with good manners on. Kindness would have been one question — what's different about this one? — asked flatly, without a face, and then actually listening instead of waiting for my turn to reassure her. What I'm afraid of is being the friend who makes things heavier. She has enough of those. But agreeing with everything makes me useless in a specific way: she can't use me to think. I'm a mirror that nods. I'm going to ask her tomorrow. Not tonight — tonight I'd be doing it so I could stop feeling like this, and she would hear that in the first sentence.

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JuneResponse Author marked: Deeply valuable

The line I keep coming back to is "she can't use me to think." I was that mirror for someone for about two years. What broke it wasn't a hard question — it was finally saying out loud that I'd been scared of being too much for her. Once that was on the table, the question was easy, and it landed as care instead of doubt. So maybe lead with the fear tomorrow. It gives her somewhere to put your honesty other than "you don't believe in me."

TheoResponses

Waiting until tomorrow is the part I'd hold onto. I've asked the honest question at the wrong hour more than once, and at that hour it always comes out as an argument I'd been rehearsing rather than a question I wanted answered. One other thing: four "that sounds greats" isn't nothing. She almost certainly heard the fourth one differently from the first, and some of what you owe her tomorrow is already half-said.