Why I'm always the one who texts first

Syel · 17 October 2026

Your thumb hovers over the conversation. The last message is yours, four days old, and you tell yourself that this time, you're waiting.

So you wait. A day, two. You tell yourself she's swamped, he's got his head somewhere else, and you end up writing anyway, a light "hey, how are you?" as if nothing were up. That's a lot of kindness for one little hey, and the "as if nothing were up" costs you more than it shows.

Under the gesture there's a sentence you don't say to anyone: if I stop, it stops. So you hold the thread, and you never find out what would happen if you let go. What it takes is tiredness, and a small tally that keeps itself in the back of your head: how many times you, how many times them.