On leaving messages on read

Forty-one. I counted, just now, because I was avoiding writing this essay, and also because counting them felt like a kind of partial reply.

The texts are not difficult, individually. A photo from a friend. A wedding invite. An old colleague checking in. The cousin who only ever texts on the third Sunday of the month, for reasons I have stopped asking about.

It is the aggregate that is difficult. Each one, on its own, is a small request: see me, respond to me, confirm that the small thread between us is still load-bearing. Forty-one of those, sitting unanswered, become a single very large request, with one's own conscience attached. I cannot answer the single very large request, because it is not a thing one can reply to.

So I leave them on read. Not as cruelty. As a small, quiet bargain: I will get to it. I am not ignoring it. I am only, for the moment, holding the maybe.

It used to bother me more than it does now. I am no longer sure that is a good thing.