Confessions of a Good Listener

Listening as disguise

I find the place card with my name written in black ink and take my seat at the long wooden table. The name Abby is written on my left. Slyvia to my right. I no longer dread walking into rooms full of people I don’t know. Somewhere along the way I resigned from caring. I smile and nod to my right and to my left. Stretch a hand out across the table, careful to mind the candles and the screaming floral centerpiece.

The appetizers have been collected and the waiters have made their rounds refilling our glasses. At this point you and I have locked into a private conversation. You’re telling me about your boyfriend. Joel? Joe? John? I can’t remember. You tell me that you love him, you really do, but you can’t help but wonder if there’s someone out there who’s better suited for you. Someone more adventurous. More passionate. Someone who will kiss you. Like really kiss you. Your voice dims as the waiter drops off the entree. You ordered the half chicken. Steamed vegetables instead of fries.

I listen and I nod. I supply frequent mh-hms so you know I’m following along. I notice the pauses between your sentences. The way your eyes dart to the side when you’re saying something you’re afraid may be cruel. I observe the slight round of your shoulders. Your legs that are crossed both at the knee and the ankle. I pose the occasional question, rhetorical mostly, but you answer them all anyway. But he loves me, you say pleadingly. Like really loves me. You tell me he’s a good man. And nobody is perfect. I nod again. Mh-hm. By the end of the evening you have convinced yourself that you’re lucky to have a man like Joe (John?) I mean, look at all of your single friends. It’s a war zone out there. You stand up and wrap your scarf around your neck. It was so amazing to meet you, you tell me as we kiss twice on the cheek. I actually can’t wait to go home and see my boyfriend now!

At home he asks you how your dinner was. You tell him you made the most amazing friend. You know absolutely nothing about me.

Such is how most of my interactions with strangers go. Somewhere along the road I learned that it’s easier to listen than to speak. People never seem to tire from talking about themselves anyways. It pours out of them, like water bursting from a broken pipe, desperate for someone to listen.

I’ve accumulated a treasure trove of stories, secrets, and confessions from strangers and seat-mates. And the irony is, the less I care about the person, the more I listen. Because in order for me to truly want to divulge and share myself with another, I have to really fuck with you. And I have to really trust you. So I listen. I pose gentle questions that hang in the air like fishing wire. I validate your statements by softly echoing them back to you. I do this simply because it’s easier. Simply because I know how to. And you walk away feeling lighter. You walk away thinking, Wow, I love Lily. She’s amazing! And you didn’t ask me a single question about myself.

Sure, taking on the role of perpetual sounding board can be a form of self erasure. Yes, it can be a method of people pleasing and social survival. But us listeners don’t need to be the center of attention. I don’t need to be heard by many. I need to be deeply understood by some. By few, even.

As long as those closest to me truly, deeply understand me and my internal world, I’m ok with being the collector of others. I’m happy to be the observer.

Because while you are talking, I am studying. I’m reading your body language and picking up on your tone. I’m taking note of your silence. I’m collecting your rhythms, contradictions, hesitations, and undercurrents.

That’s why us listeners are also the writers, collecting your characteristics and quirks to build a character out of later. We are the observers. The artists, thinkers and therapist. Us listeners make amazing sisters, great mothers, empathetic girlfriends and thoughtful wives.

We are human vaults—holding your pain, stress, and emotions under lock and key.

And who listens to the listener? I can count these people on two hands. There’s eight of them to be exact. The one’s who’s eyes don’t glaze over when I’m speaking. The one’s who aren’t gathering up words in their mouth, ready to spit out their next sentence the moment I finish mine.

The irony is, being a writer and all, when I do finally speak, it is here, fully and unabashedly. Here I am assaulting your inbox on a weekly basis while you’re innocently checking your emails. Here I come thrusting my innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities onto you, making myself the center of your attention for the next five minutes (seven if you’re a slow reader), while you are just trying to go about your day.

This is why, as Joan Didion famously put it, writing is perhaps the most hostile communication of all:

INTERVIEWER: You have said that writing is a hostile act; I have always wanted to ask you why.

JOAN DIDION: It’s hostile in that you’re trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It’s hostile to try to wrench around someone else’s mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

Thanks for listening ;)

xoxo

Lily