I feel lonely sometimes.

We all do.

And yet somehow, I fail to be effective answering messages. Who am I? A shitty customer service department that takes four-five days to sort some minimal complain?

I am far worse than that, mainly since my HR department only has a single worker and also, it’s not getting paid.

It happens to me; it happens to all of us.

I have this tendency of SOMETIMES not answering people on WhatsApp or Instagram.

Sometimes, even if I want to religiously get back to everyone, it just doesn’t happen.

Somehow, the fever of messages moves in a wave of priorities, making some of the people I text with sink in the times of sand. And times goes by, and I forget. Not because I don’t care, but because life takes over.

Life always gets in the way.

A snowstorm in an airport, an unpleasant drizzle while cycling, losing the keys right before needing to dash in a rush.

Life gets in the way.

And you sleep and wake up, snooze, lunch, go there, check that, sleep again, catch up and five days are gone in a blink. Your messages have shuffled again and somehow you left that person you actually care about hanging.

Hanging by a thread. A thread of time that keeps changing in tides of tasks and duties.

Duties that dash in a rush.

And then does not really matter if I pin it, I marked as unread or I write it down in my pending tasks. Some messages end up in that limbo of “I will remember to text back / catch up / restart the conversation”.

Spoiler alert, I do not remember it.

I am from a generation that uses different kind of apps for different kind of relationships. Let me rephrase that, I use different apps for different kind of affective bonds.

This means, that I will send you memes on Instagram and I will retweet your Tik Tok recording, but I might not answer that 0:45 minute long voice note, because that (at least for me) requires a particular kind of approach.

A distinctive type of energy if you will.

In the digital era we have become acclimatized to being constantly available. And new feelings of guilt have arisen. Now I feel bad if I don’t give every single person the same kind of digital treatment. It creates an ever changing hierarchy system that I profoundly hate.

I need to answer quickly. I need to do it now.

Otherwise, my social web will get affected. No, really, it will. It will get weaker. Frozen.

Everyone is just waiting for me to answer, they do want to know what I have to say about their very shallow questions and tribulations.

I call them when I feel secure, and I don’t mind if they don’t have time to pick up. Life gets in the way.

I WhatsApp them when I consider the conversation organic and able to be maintained without egos involved.

I message anyone on Instagram without stakes, to send memes and stupid TikToks that end up as reels that I copy from a reddit thread. I also have very similar text exchanges on Instagram to the ones I have on WhatsApp, but they are with people who orbit a bit further away.

Orbit.

That’s a better word.

Tiers, levels and other hierarchical concepts always seemed naive. Juvenile. Childish. People do not stay quiet in their own lives until they get to you, they have their own ambitions, and they make their own mistakes. Life gets in the way.

And yet we all chose to surround each other, to walk and dance around each other as if one was others’ beacon, and others were one’s too.

Eyes as lights in the tower.

Fingers caress the glass.

The mind wanders, never forget, life gets in the way.

The heart aching, just a canvas.

A new, empty canvas. Not blank, not white, not filled. Empty. To be written, to be drawn, to be lived.

There is no evil in what has no rules, and there are no rules in which cannot be named.

I will forget to text you back, but I will still love you.

My way, your way.

Our way.

And life gets in the way.