{"id":522961,"date":"2015-09-29T20:33:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T00:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/?p=522961"},"modified":"2020-11-09T18:11:42","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T23:11:42","slug":"when-youre-the-girl-who-always-texts-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/chelsea-fagan\/2015\/09\/when-youre-the-girl-who-always-texts-first\/","title":{"rendered":"When You\u2019re The Girl Who Always Texts First"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AT4A8920-2\"
Sophia Sinclair<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes I picture myself throwing my phone out the window, or dunking it in a bathtub full of water, or letting it get run over by a subway train. I think of how often it becomes a vessel for my neediness, my insistence on checking in, my tendency to initiate even in the face of silence. I\u2019ve kept so many conversations going on days, weeks, years after they should have ended, because I can never stop my phantom fingers from picking up the phone and sending one of those light-yet-incredibly-heavy \u201chey\u201ds. I wish that I knew how to be the girl who was detached and effortless, who responds after the appropriate time frame to let you know she has other shit going on, but I don\u2019t. I text first, and I text back right away.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s never any question of whether or not I\u2019m busy. I might be, but if you\u2019re one of the handful of people my brain has settled on as Very Important, my busyness has no bearing on how long I will take to respond. I\u2019m always available, always ready to roll over in bed and type a \u201cYeah, I\u2019m up\u201d from behind bleary, red eyes. I\u2019ve been two minutes from bed, makeup off and pajamas on, when the right person has texted me and sent me out into the city again looking for something. They\u2019ll never know that I was ready to call it a night, because for them, I\u2019m always on.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wish my addiction to communication stopped at my romantic relationships. Sure, everyone gets pressed over a crush every now and then and can\u2019t stop themselves from sending four messages in a row (in an ever-more-panicky attempt to seem chill), that\u2019s normal. Some of us even go so far as to delete their numbers in our phones to prevent ourselves from being that person, from revealing the true extent of our need to say something, to fill the space. If you remove that temptation, you have to wait until they deem it the right time to reach out \u2013 and then that will be precisely the right time. You don\u2019t have that judgment, so you let someone else make the call.<\/p>\n

But my texting doesn\u2019t stop at crushes. I\u2019ll get a friend-crush, as obsessive and antsy as any romantic relationship I\u2019ve ever had. I\u2019ll want to see them, to share funny things, to show them everything that reminds me of them. I\u2019ll want to know where they are, and feel the pull of envy when I hear it\u2019s with some other friend I\u2019ve never heard of. I fall in love with friends the way I do with partners, and they\u2019re used to my name popping up over and over with some new, funny thing I\u2019ve found that they just have to see. Maybe if I\u2019d waited another few minutes, they would have reached out to me, but I\u2019ll never let it go that far. When I\u2019m in the rush of things, constant communication is like a drug, and I never want the conversation to end.<\/p>\n

The only way it ends is if the pull of the connection softens, if we slip from friend to acquaintance and no longer need to be writing our own private story. Acquaintances are great, we have a million of them. But love is something so wonderful and rare, and for some of us, the only excuse we need to let our neediness bleed in full. I suppose I show love by annoying, by being just a little too present and never keeping up that attractive screen of mystery on my life. I always text first, because I have no shame. Passion, to me, is something that must be burned like a slip of paper \u2013 I can never take it in small doses, or let the anticipation build. If I want you, I want you now, now, now.<\/p>\n

A friend was telling me recently about a date that went badly, that seemed promising at first but was squandered by the guy\u2019s insistence on texting her twice in the next two days, and always initiating the conversation. She laughed at his openness, his frank expression of need and interest. I laughed along because that\u2019s what you do, but I felt the criticism as much for myself as I did for him. I am that person, in another body. I am that need to reach out, that burning desire to say hello, and to start another conversation \u2013 to get more of you. I don\u2019t think my friend will ever see that guy again, and I briefly wondered how many people I\u2019ve lost out on because they couldn\u2019t take the beep-beep of my presence in their lives.<\/p>\n

Oh, well, I thought, and pressed send on another message. \"Thought<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am that person, in another body. I am that need to reach out, that burning desire to say hello, and to start another conversation \u2013 to get more of you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36248491,"featured_media":522967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[433425955],"tags":[7313],"anchortext":[],"posttemplate":[],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[178686843],"class_list":["post-522961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dating","featured_content-nrml"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/at4a8920-2.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36248491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522968,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522961\/revisions\/522968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522961"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=522961"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=522961"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=522961"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=522961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}