Relationship

If you are the girl who always texts first

Sometimes I imagine myself throwing my phone out of the window, immersing it in a bathtub full of water, or getting hit by a subway train.

I think of how often it becomes a vessel for my need to look after my persistence, for my tendency to take the initiative even in the face of silence.

I’ve kept so many conversations going, days, weeks, years after they should have ended because I can never stop picking up the phone with my phantom fingers and sending one of those light but incredibly difficult “Hey” s.

I wish I knew how I could be the girl who is detached and effortless, who will respond after a reasonable amount of time to let you know she’s got other shit going on, but I don’t.

I write first and I write back immediately. It’s never a question of whether I’m busy or not.

Maybe I am, but if you are one of the handfuls of people that my brain has rated as very important, my busyness has no bearing on how long it takes me to answer.

I am always available, always ready to turn around in bed and type a “yes, I am awake” behind cloudy, red eyes.

I am two minutes from the bed, with make-up off and in pyjamas when the right person has written me a message and sent me back to town to get something.

You will never find out that I wanted to finish work today because I am always ready for you.

Sometimes I wish that my addiction to communication would stop in my romantic relationships.

Sure, everyone has a crush every now and then, where you can’t stop yourself from sending four messages in a row (in an increasingly panicked attempt to look cool), that’s normal.

Some of us even go so far as to erase their numbers on our phones to prevent us from being that person, to reveal the true extent of our need to say something to fill the void.

If you get rid of this temptation, you have to wait until they think it’s the right time to reach out – and then that will be the right time.

You don’t have that judgment, so you let someone else make the decision.

But my copywriting doesn’t stop at raves. I yearn for friends as obsessed and restless as in any romantic relationship I’ve ever had.

I will want to see them, share funny things with them, show them everything that reminds me of them.

I want to know where they are and feel the pull of envy when I hear that it is with another friend that I have never heard of.

I fall in love with friends, just as I fall in love with partners, and they are used to my name appearing on the screen again and again because I have to share new, fun things with them again and again.

Had I waited a few more minutes they might have turned to me, but I never let it get that far.

When I’m in a hurry, constant communication is like a drug and I want the conversation to never end.

It only ends when the attraction of the connection wears off when we become friends from the familiar and no longer have to write our own private history.

The acquaintances are great, we have a million of them.

But love is something so wonderful and rare, and for some of us the only excuse, we need to let our need bleed to the full.

I suppose I show love by being troublesome, being a little too present, and never maintaining this attractive mask of the mysterious in my life.

I always write first because I’m not ashamed. For me, passion is something that has to be burned like a piece of paper – I can never take it in small doses or let the anticipation grow.

If I want you, I want you now, now, now.

A friend recently told me about a date that went badly.

It was promising at first, but the man’s insistence on texting her twice over the next two days and always starting the conversation has dampened her interest in him.

She laughed at his openness, his open expression of needs and interests.

I laughed too because that’s the way I do it, but I felt the criticism just as much for me as for him. I am this person, in a different body.

I am this need to reach out, this burning desire to say “hello” and start another conversation – to have more of you.

I don’t think my girlfriend will ever see this man again, and I briefly wondered how many people I lost because they couldn’t bear the beep of my presence in their lives.

Oh, well, I thought and hit send on another message.

 

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