I Know Too Much About Too Many People

Some People Just Hand You Their Whole Life. I never learned to give it back.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

I am a good listener. Not because I am wise or have good advice, but because I don’t interrupt when people are talking. I don’t make it weird. That’s how it has been since high school. People would find me and just… start. And I’d listen. I didn’t think much of it then. It was just what I did.

There was this friend. Still is, technically. I know everything about her. And I mean everything. Her mother, her childhood, what exactly went wrong between them, and what never got fixed. Her marriage. Her in-laws. The fight they had that one time that I wish I didn't know the details of.

She never decided to tell me all this. It just came out over time, over lunch and dinners, conversation by conversation, until one day I realized I was carrying this whole other person's life around in my head.

She just handed it all over to me without any filter, no pacing, no hesitation. Good, bad, ugly, all of it. And I received it because that's what I do. She trusted me. I know that for sure. And I'm not angry about it. But still.

The awkward part was that we were couple-friends. We used to have frequent dinners and get-togethers. We were part of the same group. Her husband, a dear friend of ours, was genuinely a very gentle man. So it appeared.

And every time she told me something new, the next time we all sat together, I'd watch them laugh and pass food and be completely normal with each other—and I'd be thinking, I know things. Things you don't know I know.

I'd watch him refill her glass, and she'd smile at him, and I'd think about the specific thing she told me about him last Tuesday. And then I'd look away. Make conversation. Ask someone something. There were moments I'd catch her eye across the table, and I'd wonder if she was thinking about it too—everything she'd handed me—or if she'd already forgotten she said it.

I think she forgot. But I never did.

My husband noticed my face once and later said, "You know this is just how they are, right? They fight, they make up; this is their life. Nothing weird about it."

He was right. But the things I knew didn't make the dinners less odd.

The thing is, I never told her to stop. I don't think I even wanted her to. There's something about being so much trusted that gets under your skin. You start to feel necessary and responsible. Like if you suddenly pulled back, you'd be abandoning something. So you just keep listening.

It still happens. Last month, I was at a party and barely knew the woman next to me, and within half an hour, she was telling me about her father and why she doesn't speak to him anymore. Full story. Grisly details you would not want to know, not when you are in a party mood.

I stood there with my drink, thinking, How did we get here? We were talking about where to get good coffee twenty minutes ago.

I nodded. I asked the right question at the right moment.

On the way back home, there was this strange aftertaste of knowing a stranger. She'd felt lighter, probably. Maybe relieved. That's what happens when you put something down — you feel better, and the other person is just standing there holding it now. I don't think she meant anything by it. I don't think she even noticed.

I wonder sometimes if I give something off without knowing. That's what my husband says. I have this look of stillness that says, "Go ahead, I can take it."

The thing is, I can. That's not the problem.

The problem is I'm standing in the middle of someone's whole unfiltered life, and I genuinely don't know if I wanted to be there or if I just ended up there because I never learned how to step back.

That's the thing nobody tells you about being a good listener. It doesn't stop. You don't get to go home and put it down. Sometimes you carry those stories into the car and into the kitchen and before sleep.

Other people's mothers. Other people's marriages. Other people's versions of themselves that they probably don't show anyone else.

And I keep it. Some misplaced sense of responsibility. Like it was given to me in trust, and throwing it away would be a betrayal of something. But whose trust exactly? That woman at the party doesn't even remember my name, probably.

Sometimes I think I should learn to let it wash off. Just listen, nod, and then leave it there where the conversation ended.

I don't know if that's something I can learn or if it's just how I'm built.

I just know that somewhere out there, someone is sleeping better because they talked to me today.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

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