Fishing for Pride

 “Hey, long time no hear,” he says with mild enthusiasm. Then he launches into an inventory of every minute thing which has happened to him since the last time I called…which was a long time ago because these life inventories of his are tedious to listen to. I can’t stand that kind of banal substitute for actual emotional connection anymore.  Oh, I understand doing it every now and then—we all have those moments when we just need someone to act like they care what paperwork we got dumped with this week—but time after time our conversations start this way.

“Anyway, I’ll have to catch you up on Saturday,” he says, “I have a lot to get done tonight.”

That would be fine if it was true. He may have a lot to do but he has no intention of waiting until Saturday to "catch me up". And I didn’t call to hear what I know is coming next.

“I’ll just summarize for now,” he says, “I can fill in the details for you over the weekend.”

It’s rare that I have news which I think will excite him enough to draw him off a long rambling recounting of things which he tells me about again and again to “catch me up” oblivious to the fact that it is all the same thing over and over. So I blurt it out before he can say anything else: I passed my GRE. In fact, the scores were good. Really good. I got a 154 on the Quantitative—not as high as I had hoped for, but the big surprise was that I got a 166 on the Verbal. That more than makes up for a slightly weaker Quantitative from my perspective. Everybody is pleased with those scores and I think the schools will be too.

 He knew how much I’ve dreaded that test. He knew how desperately I wanted to do well so I could have a chance at this. I have to believe that as a PhD student he knows exactly how nerve wracking it all is. So when a few moments of silence passed, I thought maybe we had been disconnected.

“So yeah,” I prompt to see if he’s still on the line, “I’m really happy with my scores.”

“Yeah I wondered how the GRE went for you,” he says briefly, “around here finals went pretty well and…”

And that was it.

On with the social inventory. A stream of everyday non-occurrences which I would already be aware of if he would just cave and use Facebook like the rest of us instead of dumping the verbal equivalent of three months of status updates every time I talk to him. I only half listen to him while I wonder if other people feel this way when I recount the details of my life. I try to at least be colorful in my descriptions, to tell a good story as much as to impart the course of events. But am I just fooling myself? Do I sound every bit as self-absorbed as he does? Do I provoke in my friends and family the same sort of slightly-annoyed-malice which I feel right now?

Relationships are give and take. I wonder and worry if I am taking too much in my relationships because I am acutely aware of what it feels like to give without return. And I have been giving to this person for a long time now without any return. When our friendship started out, it was different. Back then, he listened to me and responded to me—admittedly maybe more than I did for him. So when the shift occurred, I was stunned and disappointed because suddenly, I didn’t get to tell him things anymore. But I just let it go. I was paying my dues, I realized, listening to him when he needed me to, just as he had done for me when we were in college together.

 But it’s been years. Right or wrong, I feel like I’ve paid off my debt now. And that feels so…wrong, to me. It feels artificial and superficial to measure out a relationship like that. I feel like I shouldn’t have to. I feel like he should just know it’s his turn to listen again. And then that feels wrong too—should it even be about whose turn it is to listen? Why can’t give and take happen in real time and not over the course of years? Why can’t this call be about something major that happened to me? Why can’t he just call my phone when major things happen to him and then those calls can be about him? Why can’t we just share important stuff as it happens and fill the time between with musings about philosophy and music and mathematics education the way we used to back in the day?

I know I caught him while he was studying. I try not to catch people when I know they will be busy, but good news wants to be shared, you know? I didn’t need or want much, just a simple “Congrats! But can I call you back later? I’m happy for you, but I’m busy tonight.”

Though he had the time to give me a 15min summary of his last three months, so why, exactly, couldn’t he take a couple of those minutes to acknowledge the reason I called him in the first place?

But this is ultimately about something bigger than my relationship problems with a single friend. I’m afraid to do anything to try and fix this because I keep wondering if do so isn’t hypocritical of me. I have another friend who calls me regularly, but who I never call, and when she does, I end up just recounting all the things that have happened to me. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true—we do our fair share of talking about larger societal issues through the lens of my experiences and spend a good bit of time just reminiscing about when we were kids together. I do occasionally ask how things are going with her, but she never gives any detail and the silence scares me into filling the empty space after that question with stuff. I want to find the courage to ask her why she never elaborates but I haven’t yet. Then, during the last laugh-filled call where I had once again filled several hours with ‘misadventures from alternative education’ she quietly and sadly said, “Thanks for entertaining me with good stories, I appreciate it.”

What do I do with that?

I’m thinking about her as I listen to him. I don’t ever thank him for his stories because, to be brutally honest, I don’t enjoy them. It’s not like that with everyone: I enjoy my brother’s work tales so much I more or less request them whenever we talk. And the friends I don’t exchange stories with because their stories are boring…I talk with them about abstract things, and things I saw online, and books I’ve read. Things they can participate in and add to as well. It seems to work for everyone. Everyone except him. And he’s still talking and now I’m not listening at all.

And it’s largely because of this that I oscillate between thinking I’m doing social right and fearing I’m doing it way wrong.  It’s because of this that I wonder if I come off as self absorbed online because all I ever do is talk about myself and because I don’t comment on all the blogs I read and because every now and then I’m genuinely surprised to realize that people are listening to me and that my words have consequences—even the ones I don’t say. I wonder if I’m like him.

I almost don’t notice him telling me goodbye.

“Anyway,” he says, “I’ll catch up with you on Saturday, you take care.”

I stare at the phone afterward. And it feels like obsessing to make it all about him because it isn’t all about him. But he’s such a perfect summary of what it is about. Because it’s about trying to not be like him and that seems like a poor foundation for a relationship.  And in some part of my heart I know that it only hurts because the only reason I called him hoping he would be happy for me is because I thought he might be and because like all the other calls I’m making tonight I’m really just trying to compensate for the one call I can’t make.

 Because I need the joy and pride of a dozen close friends and family to fill the void left the by the joy and pride that would have been in my mother’s voice. And I’m scared that I need that, because I know that a thousand people wouldn’t be able to replace my mother, and I’m making my disappointment about almost anything else to avoid thinking about that. And that’s why I called him. Because I needed him, in this one moment, more than I’ve needed him in the last five years combined and he wasn’t there for me. And my greatest fear is that he won’t be the only one who doesn’t pass that test.

I cross his name off the list and make the next call.