Why Your Texts Aren’t Returned
A teeny-tiny exploration in anxiety and other muck-ups.
Disclaimer: I am as much an authority on anxiety disorders as WebMD. Also, please quit looking up your symptoms on WebMD.
Let’s get this particular nugget out of the way first: texting anxiety is a thing. What we also know is that it is here to stay. We’ve come a long way from hovering next to fixed line phones waiting for a call we know is coming in just five more minutes, to scrolling casually through what seems like one hundred mobile apps in hopes of stumbling upon a message we were waiting for all along.
Or maybe we haven’t come very far.
The waiting isn’t any different. Neither is the reassessment of our last interaction. Did I say something inappropriate? Were my jokes trash? Did they not get that reference? I bet they are talking about my crap jokes and dated references with friends that are better looking, more successful, and are clued in on way cooler things than I am. Well, I can’t help it if my favourite movie is Shaolin Soccer. It’s their loss really. That movie is hilarious. I should probably unfriend them if this is how little they valu… wait, there it is! Why did I not think of checking Telegram before? Silly me.
No, we haven’t really covered much distance at all.
We have made progress, though. Modes of communication have multiplied faster than certain viruses. Consequently, so has the anxiety attached to all the waiting. Take, for instance, this quote from a 2009 film called ‘He’s Not That Into You’. Let me warn you from the get-go that it is not watchable. I can watch… whatever that was and pass it off as research. Said activities probably also feed into some not-so-latent masochism. You, however, dear reader, I care about deeply, and will continue to valiantly take on more such atrocities on your behalf.
At any rate, here it is:
I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work so I called him at home and then he e-mailed me to my Blackberry and so I texted to his cell and then he e-mailed me to my home account and the whole thing just got out of control. And I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering machine and that one answering machine has one cassette tape and that one cassette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn’t. And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.
Leaving aside the cringe-worthy neediness above, typical of all rom-coms, we have to agree with the sum and substance. If one were to plot the co-relation between convenience brought on by technology and the anxiety it causes, some very interesting questions will rear their heads. Silicon Valley and its various ringers may even have an existential crisis.
Fact remains, you can open yourself up and float that message out into this communication legoland. You have sort of given yourself over to another person. What then gives them the right to ignore you completely, or even sporadically?
Get over phone calls.
I make no bones about my personal aversion to phone calls. I have made my share of them so pocket that shaking finger right back. A call is still the best way to get an even quicker response to a quick question. My antipathy extends strictly to hour-long telethons. In all honesty, though, no one really likes phone calls. If all texts were responded to immediately, phone calls will go the way of the dodo sooner than you can yell tring-tring.
They probably haven’t done what you asked them to.
We’ve all been there. Screw men and women (haha), procrastination is the dude our mums warned us about. Everyone does it, some more than others, and no one finds pride in it. It’s probably our bodies reminding us that bears have it right and we should look into hibernating through the winter.
Sometimes, it might be you at the receiving end of the suffering created through someone else’s procrastination. Give it time. Get some frozen yogurt. If this continues to be the case, fire them. Don’t, however, forget to let them down gently.
They might be in the middle of an anxiety shitstorm.
There are too many rules when it comes to texting. So much so, that even Buzzfeed took time away from stealing Tumblr posts to fleetingly mention it and reduce it to a haha-that’s funny moment.
Respond quickly but not too quickly. Don’t respond with a cavalier attitude to a conversation that may be clamorous to another. Do not double-triple-quadruple text someone who may not be ready for such oversharing. The rules alone are sufficient to generate cognitive dissonance in a person who may not experience it otherwise.
Factor in that one of every four Indians are affected by anxiety disorders, which is a statistic from 2013 and was projected to only rise. Now imagine, one in four of your contacts pushing through excessive worry, sleep problems, irrational fears, and so many other ways that anxiety disorders manifest themselves, to have a chance at a ‘normal’ existence. This, in a country where discussions of mental health are taboo and career-wrecking, and help is sparse. Those last three words will easily top any list of understatements of the decade.
This is where it gets personal. I suffer from an anxiety disorder. There are days when I hide in my blanket, my stomach dropping due to no conceivable reason, bunking work, bathing, social life, or any life at all. Unlike other species, homo sapiens live in a delayed return environment, so the small steps I take on these days to improve the setting seem meaningless at this time. My rationale knows that the transition is only a little way away. My anxiety flips my rationale the bird in the meantime.
Responding to a text is not the furthest thing from my mind. I see your text. I berate myself for not texting you back. I tell myself I’m a terrible human being. My anxiety agrees gravely. I try reaching out. My anxiety reminds me that it will be like transporting a bacterium, capable of unraveling even worse in the people I care about most. I go back to sleep.
Your texts are precious. Their occurrence in the life of someone going through a similar predicament can be like a dinghy for the drowning, so keep sending more out in the communication legoland. You have absolutely nothing to lose. They say there’s someone out there who’s not giving up so maybe we shouldn’t either.
Or you are a garbage person with a garbage personality.
You should really reflect on that.
Note: Anxiety disorders are real and prevalent. Seek whatever help is available to you. All disorders require a combination of medication and therapy, but most importantly, a solid support system. Open up to your friends and family, you may get surprised by how not judgmental at all they prove to be. There’s also always me. I’m here to listen to you, to remind you that however cliched it sounds, you are not in this alone.
