The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

I wanted sincerity, just not the way he gave it. Not with that much honesty.

He was always doing this when we were together—being casually tolerant of things that bothered me, maybe even hurt me.

“Tell me five,” he said. “Five what?” “Five words,” he said. “About what your life is like right now.” “Right now, right now?” He touched the pad of my nose with his pointer. “Right. Now.”

But there are so many instances when honesty isn’t kind. When the kinder thing to do is to keep what you have to say to yourself.

“You act like being with him is winning some kind of prize,” Jessica would say to me later—much later. “That’s not what relationships are about.”

Jessica and I didn’t have a falling-out—I still think of her as my best friend. There was no big fight, no disagreement. But sometimes it feels like something so irrevocable happened between us, and the fact that I can’t put my finger on when makes it worse. If there was a fight, we could make up, apologize, recover. But you can’t say sorry for a slow dissolve.

I didn’t act like this was my place. It was ours. We had moved in together. But I had taken on this role of being the responsible one. Sometimes I even felt like a parent. I cleaned the dishes when they piled up, and I noticed when the milk was bad or empty. I called the super when the radiator stopped working and bought the lightbulbs when the kitchen went dark.

I missed that—the type of partnership where I didn’t feel like the weight of our world was on my shoulders alone.

I need you sometimes. And I don’t always want to have to ask. I don’t want to feel like hanging out with me is some kind of chore for you.”