The wait begins there.

Have you ever worried, without understanding why, when you send a message and there's no reply? At that moment, the chat remains open, the last text on the screen seems to look back at you, as if waiting with you. And that's where the waiting begins, that uncertain territory between what you've already said and what the other person hasn't yet answered.

The digital fog

Sometimes we don't even know if they've read it. There are options to hide confirmations, and then we're left suspended in a kind of digital fog: no certainty, no signals. Other times, we do know: the blue ticks are there, pristine, and yet the silence weighs more than any word.

When the mind completes the silence

And it's in that interval—without a response or explanation—that anxiety grows. You reread what you wrote, analyze each word, check if it sounded too cold, too direct, too something... Time becomes elastic: five minutes feel like half a lifetime. And in that void, the mind invents all sorts of stories, all with the same purpose: to justify the silence.

The illusion of control

Technology gave us the illusion of knowing everything, but not the ability to endure uncertainty. It taught us to read digital signs, but not to interpret silences. And perhaps that's the real challenge: accepting that we don't always have the right to an immediate answer.

Because sometimes the other person doesn't respond because they can't, don't want to, or are simply in a different time. And none of those options should take away our calm.

Deleting doesn't erase

When we've thought everything through and time keeps ticking by, fear takes hold with full force, and we're presented with an almost magical way to eliminate the anxiety: deleting the message. Deleting it, as if that could undo the intention or correct what we feel. But if we do, the mark remains: "message deleted," a silent evidence that screams louder than any words.

Then another, even more unsettling question arises: if we delete it, what will the other person imagine we said? Sometimes the attempt to erase ends up revealing much more than the message itself.

Learning to let go

Waiting doesn't have to be a source of suffering. It can be a space where we learn to let go, to allow the message to travel without controlling its destination, to understand that the other person's silence doesn't always reveal something about us, nor should it hurt us. Not receiving an immediate response shouldn't cause us anxiety or make us doubt ourselves.

Turn off your screen, make a cup of coffee, and listen to the world without notifications.