Waiting for a Message

There was a very specific kind of helplessness that came with waiting for a message.

You sat in front of the computer.

The computer was working perfectly.

The Internet connection was fine.

Nothing had crashed.

No error message.

No blue screen.

No missing driver.

Technically, there was no problem at all.

And yet the machine felt completely useless.

Because the only thing you wanted from it was one message from one person.

When you like someone, waiting changes the meaning of time.

Five minutes is no longer five minutes.

It becomes:

Why hasn’t she answered?

Ten minutes becomes:

Maybe she is busy.

Twenty minutes becomes:

Maybe I said something wrong.

An hour becomes an entire investigation.

You read your own message again.

Then again.

You examine punctuation.

Was that sentence too direct?

Too cold?

Too eager?

Should I have added a smiley?

Should I not have added that smiley?

Maybe the joke was stupid.

Maybe she misunderstood it.

Maybe she saw the message and decided not to answer.

Maybe she has not seen it at all.

The possibilities multiply.

The amount of actual information remains exactly the same.

Zero.

That is the problem with waiting.

The mind hates an empty space.

If reality does not provide an explanation, imagination will.

Usually a bad one.

The computer becomes part of the ritual.

You continue sitting there even though you know staring at the screen will not make the message arrive faster.

You open another window.

You close it.

You check something unrelated.

You return.

Nothing.

You play music.

That can be dangerous.

Some songs should never be played while waiting for a message from someone you like.

They make everything worse.

A perfectly ordinary delay suddenly becomes a great emotional disaster.

The song begins.

You listen to the lyrics.

Your brain immediately decides that the singer understands your exact situation.

Of course the singer does not.

The song was recorded years ago by people who have no idea you exist.

That does not matter.

At that moment, every sad song is about you.

There were a few songs I knew were particularly dangerous for this.

Put one of them on while waiting and the computer itself might be in danger.

The poor machine had done nothing wrong.

It was innocent.

But when people feel powerless, innocent objects sometimes become responsible for crimes they did not commit.

The keyboard.

The mouse.

The monitor.

The desk.

Everything is suddenly irritating because none of it can solve the one problem that matters.

Make her answer.

Computers are wonderful because they create an expectation of immediate response.

You press a key.

Something happens.

You click.

Something opens.

You run a program.

It produces a result.

Even an error is a response.

Humans are much more difficult.

You send a message.

Nothing happens.

There is no progress bar.

No estimated completion time.

No error code explaining the problem.

No documentation.

No useful message saying:

“Your request has been received. Please allow two to four hours for emotional processing.”

Just silence.

For someone used to computers, that can be surprisingly difficult.

A computer problem usually gives you something to work with.

If a program crashes, you investigate.

If the network fails, you check the connection.

If something does not compile, there is usually a line number.

Human silence has no line number.

You do not know where the error is.

Maybe there is no error.

Maybe the other person is simply having dinner.

That possibility is always much less interesting than the disaster you have constructed in your head.

Years ago, I described this as feeling helpless in front of the computer while waiting for a message from a girl I liked.

That description still makes sense to me.

The important word is helpless.

Waiting removes your ability to act.

You have already sent the message.

Sending another one too quickly may make things worse.

So now you have to do something that many of us are not very good at.

Nothing.

There is a strange discipline in doing nothing.

Not sending:

“Did you get my message?”

Not sending another joke to make the first message seem less important.

Not inventing an excuse to start a new conversation.

Not checking whether the person is online every thirty seconds.

Not turning silence into evidence.

Just waiting.

This is much harder than it sounds.

Technology has changed since then.

We now have even more information.

Delivered.

Seen.

Last online.

Typing…

These features were supposed to make communication easier.

Sometimes they simply gave anxiety better instruments.

“Seen” can hurt more than silence.

“Typing…” can create hope and then disappear.

A person can be online and still not answer you.

Now there are numbers, timestamps and indicators available for the investigation.

But the central problem remains the same.

We still do not know what another person is thinking until they tell us.

And sometimes they do not tell us.

That is part of being human.

There is no debugger for relationships.

No command that prints the current emotional state.

No function that guarantees a reply.

At some point, you have to accept that the person on the other side of the screen is not a system you control.

They have their own life.

Their own mood.

Their own reasons.

Their own timing.

This sounds obvious when written calmly.

It is much less obvious when you are staring at an empty message window.

Maybe that is one of the lessons technology accidentally teaches us.

Machines respond to commands.

People respond when they choose to.

Confusing the two is a reliable way to become miserable.

So if you are waiting for a message, close the window for a while.

Do something else.

And choose the music carefully.