There are two things that you dread checking the morning after a big night of drinking – your bank account statement and your outgoing messages. Of all the experiences quarantine has robbed us of, the anxiety associated with that morning after audit is among those that I’ve missed the least.
On the surface, it would seem that over-spending and ill-advised texts have become a thing of the past, but in reality they’ve just evolved to reflect the times. Budgets are likely being broken by Amazon instead of alcohol. And desperate texts are driven less by intoxication, and more by isolation – the “U up” text has morphed into “How are you holding up?”
My longest relationship lasted about two and a half years, with the years preceding that including an oft-complicated back and forth. We’d gotten all of the drunk text reunions out of our system long before the break-up, and as a result our post-relationship communication was now relegated to annual birthday texts.
In the two summers that have followed our breakup, I’ve grappled with sending those two words – “Happy birthday!” The first birthday text held the most significance, like an electric olive branch of sorts. But even the birthdays that followed held their own weight. Was each text just perpetuating the expectation that the other person had to follow suit in order to avoid seeming petty? And how long could this pattern last as our sole communication?
As the threat of Coronavirus ratcheted up, so did the desperation of singles everywhere – a trend that largely manifested itself in the form of unexpected communication from past partners. The texts were largely altruistic in tone, but the subtext often had a motive behind them, even if that motive was only a desire for quarantine companionship. After hearing countless stories of long forgotten exes and straight-up fuckboys sliding back in, the irrational side of me couldn’t help but feel bitter that ten plus years of history didn’t warrant so much as a “Hope you’re doing well.”
But after giving it additional thought, my perspective changed. If we could make it through a global pandemic, nation-wide civil unrest, and even regional murder hornets without a single text, we could certainly make it through another birthday without one.
