The Art of Speaking Emptiness

The morning (afternoon) was bright and sunny. I had been awakened by my suitemates' unnecessary noisiness once again. After the commotion next door died down, I got myself out of bed so I could get started on the three- hour process of washing and drying my hair (I'm serious). Of course, the suitemates had left it locked again. I had to force the lock.

One lather- rinse- and- repeat later, I turned off the faucet just in time to hear Chaka Khan and Mary J. Blige's "Disrespectful" burst out of my cell phone, stream through the bathroom door. Since that ringtone was only assigned to one person, I had a fairly good idea of who was calling me.

I took my time finishing my hair. Why should I hurry to speak to someone who hadn't made any real effort to speak to me? It was probably a half- hour later when I called him back.

What followed was the most one- sided phone conversation I've ever had outside of family discussions... one- sided on his end. Not that he noticed. I was still talking, still responding to what he was saying, still making conversation. But nothing I said had any real value. You see, after I realized that people, including friends, do not want to be burdened with your problems, I learned the art of speaking nothing.

He told me about his classes (they're not very challenging), his suitemates (almost as bad as mine), his routine (ridiculously long), things like that. I told him about my classes (they're over, yay), my suitemates (locked me out again), my plans (only because he asked). That was the pattern our conversation took.

I purposely kept my end of the conversation shallow. I did not mention my mother's predicament, or my crushed dreams, or my upcoming EMG. Nor did I mention my sister, which is probably something he would have wanted to hear about; it would have led to me mentioning my mother. I'm assuming he didn't notice the nature, the emptiness of my words, but maybe he did- there were things that I know about and expected him to explain, which he didn't bring up. No mention was made of the discrepancy between my last Facebook message and his call, nor of the cryptic message left by one of our mutual friends on his Wall, nor of the mysterious comment on my website. Maybe he was speaking just as emptily as I was. Whether or not he was or not makes no difference to me- I got what I needed out of the phone call: the sound of his voice.

One of the fundamental mistakes women seem to make is blabbing about our problems to the men in our lives. I can tell you from experience: They don't want to hear it. "Word vomit" (to borrow a phrase from Mean Girls) will not help your case. If you don't want to make a bad impression on him- or on anyone- sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all.