Battling the 'blue tick' zone
'Seen-zoning' isn't a crime!
“Hey sorry. Switching on
the read recipients right away. Someone was annoying me yesterday and hence I
had turned it off. I know how irritating it is to you. Sorry (giggles).”
I hadn’t noticed that
till then. Of course, I remember arguing with her a few months back for the
same. My reason was simple. “How on earth am I to know whether you saw my
message or not.”
This struck me hard. Well,
just before writing this blog, I noticed that I have about 150 unread messages
in WhatsApp. The point is, I wouldn’t have noticed the message when I received
it or I would have been busy at that moment or maybe my mental state wasn’t
good enough to type an appropriate reply to your message. The same thing goes
well with calls. I have had moments when I sit back and stare with eyes wide open while getting an incoming call from person ‘X’. But my mind doesn’t let me pick the call
instead it writes an apology immediately. “Sorry. Couldn’t take your call. I
have a bad throat. Can you text or send voice note if you don’t mind.” I
might not have a bad throat then, but I have this aversion towards calls at that moment. This has grown too worse that a good friend of mine texted.
“You never pick calls, do
you?”
“I am sorry. But you know
things have been worse. I don’t talk to anyone these days.
I prefer texting. I just don’t feel like talking. You can check my call logs if
you need proof.”
“Lol! I haven’t pierced
my ear, and I don’t want you to pierce it with this lie of yours.”
This annoyed me a bit. But
still, I like that friend, so I sent a voice message swearing that I wasn’t lying.
He didn’t play my message (Of course you would get a blue mark on voice
messages in WhatsApp once it’s played)
“If you cannot attend
calls, I wouldn’t play your voice messages either. Tit for Tat.”
I was about to call him
that day, till the moment I saw this message because I was sure that my
explanation would pay no heed. This wasn’t one lone incident, similar
things have happened from people much elder to me as well.
We all have our own priorities.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t care or empathise for others. It just means “Not
now. But sometime soon”. This ‘soon’ might be an hour later, two or three
months later but IT'S OKAY. Until this lockdown, I hadn’t realised the importance
of ‘me-time’. Trust me, I never did. If I was happy, I ring up to someone. I
did the same when I was sad or when I had to take a very important decision.
Things were completely fine, until, I lost touch with that person out of the
blue. I realised that I had lost my decisiveness. I had entrusted all my emotions
into that person so much that I had forgotten that I live in a separate body and
this body is capable of doing its chores all by itself. I realised that my body was doing all
its physical chores but the key of my feelings was with someone else. This realisation
messed up my physical and mental activity, horribly. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t
sleep, I couldn’t talk, my lips were dark indicating stress and all I did was
to walk to and fro in my room. I feared light during the day and I feared
darkness at night. I decided to talk it out because I knew that this might have
a horrible climax. I am grateful to those friends who listened to all my tantrums.
I remember crying to one of them at 2:30AM! They pulled me out from my bed,
forced me to sleep on time. One of them (who lives in a different city) was
even ready to quarantine herself for 14 days here so that she could spend some time with me. Of course, I stopped her. But when all this was happening, I
again realised that I was becoming dependent. My mind was reaching that comfort
zone of dependency per se. This struck me, again!
But this time, I wanted
to ‘feel’ what I ‘feel’ instead of encapsulating the same on someone else. I
cried when I wanted to. I stayed silent when I wanted to. I even missed someone
when I wanted to. However, I made sure that I wouldn’t stagnate any of this feeling for a longer duration of time. I read a few self-help books as well. I don’t
want to romanticize on these books, but still, it helped me in my betterment. For
this, I started scheduling my day the previous night. Most of the time I couldn’t
keep my deadlines, but I made sure to complete my targets for the day without
fail. This gave me a sense of satisfaction when I went to sleep that night.
This is when I realised
the toxicity of ‘seen-zoning’ clearly.
Since I have developed a
time chart for myself, I might not stay online for long. Even if I did, I was
learning something new or watching a series or just posting that random shit I
read or saw recently. This pissed my contacts badly. Even if I had not set a
time chart, I prefer not to talk at times because I am literally understanding
myself first. If I cannot make myself happy, how can I promise to make you happy?
Tell me! How can I even listen to all your issues when there are too many
things revolving around my head. Even our brains have a saturation point! Adding
more content to it is simply ‘a waste of time’. I have lost too many people in
this meantime and I am grateful to them for letting me go instead of sticking
to me and suffocate themselves. Also, I am grateful to the ones who still stay
with me no matter how weird I behave! But this solitude has given me so much
strength and positivity which I lacked a few days back. I decided to write this
immediately after I read a similar post on Instagram and blue-ticks doesn't matter me anymore!
Let’s ‘self-connect’
first before we ‘build’ our contacts elsewhere, right?
Comments