Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

I felt excited, ready for the challenge of visiting a stranger’s home, already preparing compliments and certain facial expressions to make myself seem charming.

When Bobbi talked about me it felt like seeing myself in a mirror for the first time.

Sometimes when I was doing something dull, like walking home from work or hanging up laundry, I liked to imagine that I looked like Bobbi. She had better posture than I did, and a memorably beautiful face. The pretense was so real to me that when I accidentally caught sight of my reflection and saw my own appearance, I felt a strange, depersonalizing shock.

At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterward think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.

What I like about your male characters, Bobbi said, is they’re all horrible. They’re not all horrible. At best they’re very morally ambiguous. Aren’t we all? I said.

Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go.

My ego had always been an issue. I knew that intellectual attainment was morally neutral at best, but when bad things happened to me I made myself feel better by thinking about how smart I was.

But the acclaim also felt like part of the performance itself, the best part, and the most pure expression of what I was trying to do, which was to make myself into this kind of person: someone worthy of praise, worthy of love.

He was the first person I had met since Bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way I enjoyed coffee or loud music.

He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smoldering like it was my own face smoldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterward my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too.

Watching the soap bubbles slide silently down the blades of the kitchen knives, I had a sudden desire to harm myself.

How was London? I asked. You were over there last month, were you? Was that last month? she said. Time is so funny. She said she had better be getting back to dinner and hung up. I didn’t think there was anything remotely funny about time, certainly not “so funny.”

Who needs liberal democracy? Maybe we should just burn down government buildings and see where that gets us. I know you’re exaggerating, said Nick, but increasingly it’s hard to see why not.

She couldn’t understand that I didn’t love him. You must love him, she told me when I was sixteen. He’s your father. Who says I have to love him? I said.

Was I kind to others? It was hard to nail down an answer. I worried that if I did turn out to have a personality, it would be one of the unkind ones. Did I only worry about this question because as a woman I felt required to put the needs of others before my own? Was “kindness” just another term for submission in the face of conflict? These were the kind of things I wrote about in my diary as a teenager: as a feminist I have the right not to love anyone.

My favorite part of the gospels was in Matthew, when Jesus said: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. I shared in this desire for moral superiority over my enemies. Jesus always wanted to be the better person, and so did I. I underlined this passage in red pencil several times, to illustrate that I understood the Christian way of life.

I hung up the phone. After that I put some cold water on my face and dried it, the same face I had always had, the one I would have until I died.

I realized my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful. Nothing would.