Text It Like It Is

Text+It+Like+It+Is

By Emma Childs, Staff Writer

“Oh no, you can’t respond to his text yet, you have to wait at least 30 minutes.” Right, because that makes sense. You wouldn’t want the boy that you like to think that you like him. Being cool has now reached the point where it’s almost recognized as an artform. Teens are striving to rid the stench of desperation by acting as unphased and emotionally detached as possible: the least degree of emotion shown, the more interesting you become. Basically, make yourself totally devoid of feelings and leave any and all of your emotional hangups at the door.

Not only is distancing yourself from your emotions difficult to do, that highly-sought-after vibe of nonchalance directly grapples with normal, human behavior. These bland and fake projections people are desperately trying to portray contradict something that we just cannot changewe are emotionally complex human beings.

I understand that people don’t put themselves out there out of fear of appearing desperate or getting hurt. So instead, they either wait the appropriate amount of time to respond in the effort to appear casual or answer with vague and overworked answers that are crafted in the hopes of appearing unbothered. (Is that lowercase “o” in your ‘okay’ really gunna say what you want it to?)

If we are constantly pretending not to feel and prance around what we want to say instead of actually saying it, we become a bunch of emotionally and physically mute zombies getting nothing accomplished. I understand that putting yourself out there is risky, but isn’t not saying what you feel as big of a risk too? If you never say what you truly wish to, you’re demeaning your own thoughts and character.

I am  sick and tired of this textual, masquerade dance in which we engage. After one incident last year that involved a lot of tissues, an appalling amount of chocolate, and an obvious silence from the boy I liked, I vowed to take more control over the communication in my life. When I want to talk to someone, I make an effort to talk to them and say what I want to say. Instead of shrugging it off and pretending I don’t care, I now have more control. This seems like an incredibly obvious thing to do but before the night of the chocolate-induced coma, the sheer thought of texting someone first, possibly bothering them, sent my psyche into a downward spiral of worry and anguish. Reaching out to someone can seem bold and scary but we deserve for our words to have value and we should respect ourselves enough to demand to be heard.

We waste all this effort trying to not be desperate. When, in reality, our desperation is a representation of our pure and honest selves and needs to be held in a higher regard. With these pure and unadulterated actions, we show who we are, what we’re actually feeling. These moments are glimpses inside our brains to observe our emotions acting without inhibitions. No overthought frustration. So when he texts you, don’t count to a certain number of appropriate minutes before replyingjust answer him. When your partner in your group project goes AWOL, text them and remind them to make sure their work gets done. If you have something you want to say, don’t wait for others to initiate–start the conversation yourself.

There is and never will be a way to predict the future so try to get out of the habit of thinking “Oh I’ll just tell her tomorrow” because maybe, you just won’t get the chance to. Things are constantly going wrong so why would we push off an opportunity to speak your mind when you might not be able to? Humans don’t have all this control we pretend to possess so we should stop gambling with this ambiguity. Say what is on your mind and be as unapologetically bold as need be, because we owe it to ourselves.