Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

When Bobbi talked about me it felt like seeing myself in a mirror for the first time. I also looked in actual mirrors more often.

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.

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.

there’s something beautiful about the way you think and feel, or the way that you experience the world is beautiful in some way.

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.

Bobbi, who belonged everywhere and had a quality about her that made me invisible by comparison.

It was hard to figure out how Nick really felt. In bed he never put any pressure on me to do anything, and he was always very sensitive to what I wanted. Still, there was something blank and withholding about him. He never said anything nice about my appearance. He never touched or kissed me spontaneously. I still felt nervous whenever we undressed, and the first time I gave him head he was so quiet that I stopped to ask if I was hurting him. He said no, but when I started again, he stayed completely silent.

At times I thought this was the worst misery I had experienced in my life, but it was also a very shallow misery, which at any time could have been relieved completely by a word from him and transformed into idiotic happiness.

something being over is not the same as something never having happened.

I’d lied to everyone, to Melissa, even to Bobbi, just so I could be with Nick. I had left myself no one to confide in, no one who would feel any sympathy for what I’d done. And after all that, he was in love with someone else.

It would depress me to sleep with someone who loved someone else.

Feelings were just feelings, they had no material reality.

was okay to cry because nobody could see me, and I would never tell anyone about it.

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?

I couldn’t believe that he went home to her every evening, or that they ate dinner together and sometimes watched films on their TV. What did they talk about? Did they amuse each other? Did they discuss their emotional lives, did they confide in one another? Did he respect Melissa more than me? Did he like her more? If we were both going to die in a burning building and he could only save one of us, wouldn’t he certainly save Melissa and not me? It seemed practically evil to have so much sex with someone who you would later allow to burn to death.

I felt sorry for all of us, like we were just little children pretending to be adults.

The problem isn’t that you’re married, I said. The problem is that I love you and you obviously don’t love me. He took a deep breath in and said: you’re being unbelievably dramatic, Frances. Fuck you, I said.

People were always wanting me to show some weakness so they could reassure me. It made them feel worthy, I knew all about that.

Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.

Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others.

You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it. Oh well, Bobbi’s rich, Nick’s a man, I can’t hurt these people. If anything they’re out to hurt me and I’m defending myself.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t enjoy things like other people did.

The idea of forgetting anything about you is kind of horrifying to me.

Remember the first time we kissed? he said. At the party. And I said I didn’t think the utility room was a good place to be kissing and we left. You know I went up to my room and waited for you, right? I mean for hours. And at first I really thought you would come. It was probably the most wretched I ever felt in my life, this kind of ecstatic wretchedness that in a way I was practically enjoying. Because even if you did come upstairs, what then? The house was full of people, it’s not like anything was going to happen. But every time I thought of going back down again I would imagine hearing you on the stairs, and I couldn’t leave, I mean I physically couldn’t.

You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.