The Group Chat That Made Me Anxious (And How I Fixed It)
The group chat had forty-three unread messages, and I had only been away from it for an hour.
It was called “Class 9B 🍂” and it never slept. People posted homework questions, memes, voice notes, photos of lunch and arguments about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. My phone buzzed on the blanket beside me every few seconds, like a very small, very persistent bird.
I did not want to read it. I also could not not read it. So I curled up on the sofa in my biggest sweater, opened it, and scrolled up to the beginning.
Somebody had written, we should totally all meet on Saturday! Somebody had replied with a thumbs-up. Then somebody had written lol Lina isn’t even answering, and my stomach dropped through the floor.
I had not answered because I was reading. I was reading because I was afraid to answer. And I was afraid to answer because every reply felt like a test I could fail in front of thirty people.
What if I say the wrong thing?
What if I miss something important?
Why can’t I just put my phone down?
The chat that never ends
At eleven o’clock, Zoe called. I picked up and whispered, “I can’t stop reading it.”
“Reading what?” she asked. Then she said, “Oh. The chat.” She sighed in the way that means I’m coming over, and ten minutes later she was knocking softly at the door with a bag of popcorn and her pencil stuck in her curls.
She sat down beside me, took one look at the glowing screen and the bubbles on my face, and asked a very simple question.
“How do you feel when you open it? And how do you feel when you close it?”
I thought about it honestly. “When I open it, my chest gets tight. When I close it… I feel guilty. Like I’m abandoning everyone.”
“So both buttons feel bad.” She nodded. “That means the problem isn’t what you do with the chat. It’s that the chat has no edges. It’s a room with no door, and you can’t tell when you’re allowed to leave.”
· · ·
Giving the chat a door
“We’re going to build it one,” said Zoe. “First, notifications off. Not forever. Just for tonight.”
She held out her hand and I gave her my phone, a little reluctantly, as if I were handing over a small, buzzing animal. She tapped to the chat’s settings and found a button with a tiny crescent moon on it.
“Mute,” she said. “Everyone can still talk. The chat will still be there in the morning. You just won’t be on call.”
My thumb hovered. “But what if something important happens?”
“Then somebody will text you, or call you, or knock on your door. That’s what important is for.” She smiled. “A group chat is not a fire alarm, Lina. It’s a hallway full of people talking.”
I pressed the moon. The phone gave one small, soft chime, and the bubbles seemed to fade a little at the edges, like breath on a cold window.
Two check-ins, not forty
“Second rule,” said Zoe. “Choose when you visit. Pick two times a day, maybe after breakfast and after dinner. Ten minutes each. Reply to the things that need you, send a heart to the things that make you smile, and then close the door.”
“And if I forget to answer someone?”
“Then they’ll ask again. And if they don’t, it wasn’t urgent.” She tossed a piece of popcorn into the air and caught it. “Also, you are allowed to write one sentence. Sorry, just catching up, what did I miss? Nobody will faint.”
I wrote it on a sticky note and put it on the back of my phone. I turned the phone face down on the table next to my bed. Zoe and I watched an old movie with the popcorn between us until I fell asleep with my head on a cushion.
The strange thing was how quiet my chest felt. The chat had not changed. It had simply stopped following me around the house.
· · ·
Morning, and a tiny bubble
I woke up early, with sunshine on the curtains. I made a cup of tea and sat by the window with the blanket around my knees. My phone lay on the little table beside me, dark and still.
I looked out at the yellow trees. A single soap bubble drifted past the glass, drifted up and was gone. I let myself notice it.
After breakfast, I opened the chat for ten minutes. There were sixty-one messages. Most of them were memes, a few were about Saturday, and one was a voice note from somebody’s grandmother singing happy birthday to a cat. I answered the Saturday question, sent three hearts and wrote, Sorry, just catching up!
Somebody replied within a minute: We missed you, welcome back!!
I laughed out loud. Nobody had been angry. Nobody had kept score. The room had a door, and I had walked out of it, and everyone was still there.
I still love my friends, and I still love the memes. The chat is allowed to be loud, because I am allowed to be somewhere else.
Some evenings the old pull comes back, and my thumb wants to scroll just once more. When it does, I look for the little moon. Then I put the phone face down, pick up my tea and let the hallway keep talking without me.
With love,
Lina
