The Silent Shame Of The Read Receipt

i erase evidence of me not getting what i wanted

i love instagram. do you hear that meta! i love instagram because i love dms because i can easily unsend responseless messages. i can erase all evidence of me not getting something i wanted. i can’t bare to see it. every read receipt burns a hole in my retina which burns a whole into the part of my brain that was supposed to convince me i’m not unloveable.

when i unsend unread messages, i can pretend like i don’t live in a responseless reality. everybody responds to me! everybody is falling in line to talk to me! everybody loves me! everybody fucking loves me! i have one billion followers who all want to sleep with me and i’m ok with that because i want to sleep with all of them!

there’s two possible scenarios here, one a little more favorable than the other:

if the message hasn’t been read, i can unsend with some dignity. if i’m feeling ok, i’ll just convince myself they haven’t read it, and they aren’t purposefully ignoring me. i haven’t been feeling ok a lot lately, so usually my train of thought is something along the lines of “they haven’t read it because it’s my message and therefore unimportant and burdensome and annoying and juvenile.” this is still more dignified than unsending a read message, but there’s no avoiding being pathetic in either situation.

if the message has been read, this is the worst case scenario. i’m unsending with my ears folded and my tail between my legs. i’m unsending with my gaze lowered. the silent shame of the ‘Seen’ under my text. on instagram, i’m not even afforded the luxury of imagining they Read the message, just that they Saw it, passively. reluctantly. because how else would you handle me?

even when i unsend my messages, i don’t kid myself. i don’t unsend every responseless message. i have to maintain the realistic relationship dynamic, which always involves more blue messages than grey ones. more outgoing than incoming. i just do this because i know i’ll go through conversations with simultaneous hope and sorrow, searching for evidence they like me at all, yet painfully aware that even the image of a somewhat-equal conversation is one i’ve manufactured. i’m counting on forgetfulness. i’m counting on 21st century attention spans. i’m counting on the hours i spend rotting my brain to erase the memory of not being worth a response. except i remember everything and there are months from as recent as 2023 missing.

as someone who is also bad at answering texts, let me say this: i’m not talking about unanswered reels / memes. i’m talking about messages with substance. my ‘merry christmas’ WhatsApp text that was left on read. my ‘i miss u how r u!’ message. the ‘did i do something?’ message will remain forever drafted in my textbox, but it’s always on my mind. is it personal? what the fuck am i doing? my BA is collecting dust because i’m busy folding paper cranes for a text back or a story like.

i return to every dm like the scene of a crime. maybe sometimes i expect to find, within their few messages, previously undiscovered evidence that they love me. they’re so in love with me it scares them into detachment. this is what i tell myself. this delusion is why i’m still alive and still sending dms. or, when i’ve exhausted every interaction, i take a break and come back to it. maybe i’m expecting the letters of their (already scarce) messages to have shifted while i was away, grotesquely and painfully morphing themselves into “i love you!” and “you are my best friend which is awesome because i know you consider me your best friend!” and “i think about you as much as you think about me!” but i can’t make anything out of their silence.