The Decency of the Text

Anxiety began to build up. It was Sunday night and I wondered if he had arrived home from the Georgia/Florida game. I started to receive texts from the other girls to confirm that their boyfriends and #hims had returned from the weekend-long guys trip. I waited and waited for my iPhone to show that I had one unread message. I even pulled up our last exchange to make sure that I hadn’t missed it, as if Apple had a defect that caused for the text notifications to go AWOL. Nope, he just hadn’t texted me.

The obvious disrespect and lack of decency was the result of a poorly-defined “relationship.” After “talking” for three months, he told me that he wasn’t ready for anything serious. However, he proposed his view of exclusivity, which meant all the perks of having a boyfriend without the title. His “exclusivity” meant to shallowly satisfy my need for commitment by providing him loopholes that would excuse his debauchery. And naturally, debauchery happened, which caused me to play “Love is Blind” on repeat and deactivate my Facebook account. While I drank and bar hopped to mask my feelings, he remained unaffected. His lack of validated intimacy granted him emotional immunity. It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t a surprise either.

Fast forward to last December. Christmas was around the corner but that didn’t affect the amount of last minute assignments that piled in. I hopped from meeting to meeting and stopped by a coworker’s office to have a quick chat. A few minutes after I finally returned to my office, my phone lit up. It was a text from my boyfriend, who was spending time with family in Hawaii.

“I’m back.”