Message Received

The notification alert on your phone awakens you and that is disturbing because you were certain you turned off notification sounds on all your apps. You groggily sit up in bed and check your phone, it is four in the morning and you have one unread message. [[Roll over and go back to sleep.]] [[Fuck it, check the message.]]

You wake back up around one in the afternoon, today is your day off and you like to sleep in on your days off. Your psychiatrist has lectured you exhaustively about the importance of good sleep hygiene, they gave you multi-page print outs that stressed the value of maintaining a consistent schedule, only using your bed for bed things, and you forget what else you used the paper as scrap paper to write the good ideas and thoughts that often strike you at night and that are one of the reasons for the poor sleep hygiene. Anyway, you still have one unread message. [[Get out of bed (Difficulty = Hard)]] [[Fuck it, check the message.]]

It's a message from your BFF Amelia, it reads, "Hey, I know we haven't talked in awhile and I don't want to volunteer you for emotional labor so feel free to say no but do you have time to talk?" [["Always."]] [["Not really."]] [[Leave her on read.]]

Oh god this was a terrible decision. Mistakes were made. You're up now. [[Hygiene mode activate, shower, brush teeth, put on deoderant, etc.]] [[Stagger to the kitchen and eat something, ANYTHING.]]

You did it! Good job. [[Stagger to the kitchen and eat something, ANYTHING.]] [[Check your phone.]]

You eat a bowl of ceral or something, eating is important but me defining what exactly you eat isn't important. I'm not George R.R. Martin, I'm not gonna write 1-3 paragraphs about what you eat for breakfast. The important thing is that you ate. [[Take your pills.]] [[Check your phone.]]

Goddamn you are fucking killing it today. I'm so proud of you. You bask in your accomplishment for a moment, it's important to validate even these small achievements sometimes..............OK, you're sufficiently validated, now what? [[Check your phone.]] [[Do ANYTHING else.]]

You have one unread message. [[Fuck it, check the message.]] [[Make the terrible mistake of checking social media.]]

Oh god this was a terrible decision. It's after seven PM now, where did that time go? You still have a notification of one unread message on your phone. [[Fuck it, check the message.]] [[Ignore it.]]

Please just [[Check your phone.]]

She responds back almost immediately, "Lately I've been thinking a lot about my own mortality and what I even mean to the universe. It's been causing me a lot of distress and anxiety but I can't stop thinking about it. What do I do?" [[Respond, "Amelia, this is too big of a conversation to have over the phone. Wanna meet up at the Taco Bell and talk this out over some burritos?"]] [[Respond by linking to the "if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war" dril tweet.]]

After a few moments she responds, "Hey, that's fine. I respect you for knowing your limits and maintaining your boundaries. I could really stand to learn such skills from you, to be honest. Take care of yourself, okay? I'll check back in again." And she does, and it really does seem to be fine. As far as you know, she never brings up whatever it was she wanted to talk to you about was and maybe you wonder about that and maybe you don't. What's important is that you have a friend who respects 'no' and those kinds of friends are precious. The end.

You Alpha you. What a power move. Do you ever respond to the message? [[Yes.]] [[No.]]

Great, you respond with? [["Always."]] [["Not really."]]

You have your own reasons for making this choice and I'm not going to judge you. Maybe Amelia wronged you. Maybe your time is just too important. Maybe you got distracted by something and genuinely forgot about the message without the notification and now too much time has passed and it would be awkward, I've done this. Anyway, you're valid but this is where the story ends. Thanks for playing.

Yeah... Yeah... Sometimes messaging people is hard. Whatever your reasons? It's fine, y'know? We are all just spacedust or whatever. Thanks for playing the game!

She replies, "Taco Bell? Lol ok." You meet up at the Taco Bell, "Why Taco Bell?" She asks you in person. "Has anyone ever made a good decision in a Taco Bell, ever?" You reply. She laughs. You order some food and sit down together. Over the course of the meal you talk in depth about life, death, and meaning. Amelia begins to cheer up and feel better as each of you talks about your own thoughts and feelings. In the end, we all die and only a fraction of us will ever do anything that will last for generations beyond us and that's okay. In my honorable opinion mattering now is more important than mattering for eternity and I'm the one writing this. By the way, you are mattering now. And so am I.

Amelia and you spend the next hour and a half posting memes at each other, making jokes, and pretty much doing everything but talking about the existential crisis she is obviously going through right now. But doing this actually helps and is a certified good friend thing to do. It breaks people out of their distress, cheers them up, and gets their mind off the issue. Later, you can revisit this issue (even in the same conversation) once she's in a better mental state. It's important to make sure that, before you employ this strategy, your friend will take it well. In this case she did and you were a good friend. Being a good friend is important! Thanks for playing my game.