“Hi Terry, Long time, no see. How you doing?”
Terry stared at the message for a long time, she didn’t know how to respond.
She wanted to say that things had been hard lately, that she wasn’t coping, that she needed someone to tell her everything was going to be all right, and mean it. She wanted to say her world was falling apart and she didn’t know where to turn.
Amy knew her message had been seen, but an hour had gone by. She began to wonder if Terry wanted to talk to her. She didn’t know that Terry had typed and undone every attempt so far. Eventually, a message popped up”
“Hey Amy, It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I’m fine. How are you?”
It wasn’t much for an hours work. All those deleted words screamed to be put back in.
As Terry had pressed send she began to worry that it didn’t say enough, would Amy have been snubbed by the wait? But the weight of things unsaid felt too heavy to send in a message. Especially the first message in a long time.
It felt sometimes as if she lived her true life between invisible brackets. Amy would never hear her tone in a message. ‘I’m fine’ in person would have sounded entirely different. I’m fine in person would have read:
“Hey Amy, It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I’m fine. (except I’m not, and I don’t want to bother you, but I could use a friend right now) How are you?
Amy’s heart had sank as she read the response. It was a short, impersonal reply showing that time had separated them so much that neither knew what to say to the other. Suddenly replying seemed the hardest thing to do in the world. She knew what she wanted to say, but Terry had said she was fine. If Amy opened up it might be an intrusion on Terry’s life. After a short pause, she typed the socially accepted response spoken between strangers. It was like a code that acknowledged other people’s existence, without getting to know them. It marked them as no longer friends, even though they might both try to pretend.
“Glad you’re ok. I’m all good too. We should catch up soon.”
Terry was afraid of the lack of response from her friend, was worried that she had upset her with her short message, but she didn’t know how to fix it. If only Terry could have read Amy’s invisible brackets she would see:
“I’m not ok. I reached out to an old friend hoping to bring back memories of the good days, but it’s been too long and our conversation here feels weirdly strained. I wish I knew how to talk to you, but I’m a different person now. I don’t know if we have anything in common any more. I hope that we can regain our friendship in time, but I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t have as much energy as I thought I had to figure it out.”
Terry braced herself to leave the final response. After some thought she added an exclamation point to make sure she sounded excited about her life, not wanting to seem to be full of dread.
“We should totally catch up soon, so much has happened since we last spoke!”
With a seemingly leaden finger, Amy pressed the like button in response.
The invisible brackets were full of screaming.
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