What I was waiting for wasn't a reply

The reply hasn't come yet.

Even though I know that, I keep opening LINE over and over.

This is a story about a night like that.

*

It wasn't that I wanted a reply,
I think I just wanted a reason to believe that I was still okay.

I realized that when it was past 1:00 AM.

*

I hold my smartphone in bed and turn on the screen.
There are no notifications.
I know.
But I open LINE again.

I check the last message I sent, then close it again.
I wonder how many times I've repeated that now.

"Hey, are you free tomorrow?"

No matter how many times I read it, it looks like a normal sentence.
But I keep reading it over and over.

The placement of the punctuation, whether I should have added an emoji, or if I should have used a more casual tone.
I'm thinking about things like that all alone in a quiet room.

Wondering if I said something weird.

It's not that the time spent waiting for a reply is painful, but that I felt miserable being this anxious while waiting for one.

Rather than liking the other person,
the feeling of wondering what they think of me had grown larger.

They don't hate me, right?
I'm not being treated carelessly, right?
They are actually thinking about me, right?

It wasn't so much that I wanted a reply, but that I couldn't let go of my phone because I wanted to confirm those things.

I'm a little put off by myself.
A part of me that has cooled down thinks, "It's not something to worry about this much."
But my hands keep moving.
I turn on the screen one more time.

*

If a reply were to come, would I feel relieved? Yes, I would.
But it wouldn't last long.

The feeling of relief lasts only a moment, and then I send the next message,
and wait again.

In that cycle, I somehow start to realize.

Maybe what I was waiting for wasn't a reply.

Something beyond the reply.
Proof that I'm "not hated yet."
The feeling that "this relationship is still continuing."
Confirmation that "I am not being treated carelessly."

That is what I was seeking in LINE.

The other person might just have been sleepy.
They might be the type to put off replying.
They might just not be looking at their phone.

But inside me, a feeling quietly grows that something is going wrong.

It's not that I'm crying.
It's not that I'm angry either.
Just lying in bed, only the anxiety keeps piling up.

＊

Could it be that rather than liking the other person, I've been constantly checking how I'm being treated?

When I thought that, I felt a little different.

Whether I am being cherished.
Whether I am not being treated carelessly.
Whether they think that I, as a person, am truly there.

I was trying to measure that by the speed of their reply.

Even if a reply comes, fundamentally nothing is solved.

Relief comes. But the next night, I'm waiting again.

What I really want is
something that doesn't have to waver, whether there is a reply or not.

Something that allows me to reassure myself, even if it's not words from that person.

But that is not something that can be sent to me by someone else.

＊

I was able to write this the morning after a normal reply had arrived.

Even so, perhaps what I was waiting for wasn't a reply from them, but a version of myself that could feel at ease.

Have you ever had a night where, while waiting for a reply, you were actually waiting for something else?

I also write about nights when no reply comes here.