The Urge to Text Your Ex Is Not an Emergency

No contact can be going beautifully until 11:47 p.m., when your mind suddenly remembers that your ex once liked a very specific kind of cookie.

This feels important.

You have not contacted him in twelve days. You have survived evenings, weekends, one lonely Sunday and a song that had absolutely no business appearing in a grocery store, yet now you are holding your phone and thinking, He would find this funny.

And just like that, you are standing in front of the ex vending machine again.

You know this machine because you have put plenty of coins into it. Sometimes you got something nice. Sometimes the little spiral turned halfway and left your snack hanging there while you stared at it in disbelief.

And yet here you are again, coin in hand.

Suddenly Everything Qualifies as a Reason

The strange part is that you usually remember perfectly well why you stopped. Your mind just becomes extremely talented at finding exceptions.

Obviously you are not going to text him because you miss him. That would be ridiculous. You are texting because his favorite band announced a tour, which is completely different.

Or because you found the restaurant he once mentioned. Or because his birthday is approaching. Or because you discovered his old T-shirt in the back of a drawer and surely a grown man cannot be expected to continue living without that particular gray T-shirt.

Then there are the emergencies that are not emergencies.

You had a bad day.

Coin.

You feel lonely.

Coin.

You went somewhere you used to go together.

Coin.

You have just remembered something funny he said two years ago and, for reasons nobody can explain, this now feels urgent.

By this point, the ex vending machine barely has to do anything. It can just stand there looking familiar while you do all the explaining yourself. This one little visit hardly counts, surely.

You are not reopening anything, obviously. You are simply purchasing one tiny emotional snack.

What could possibly happen?

You Already Know What Is in the Machine

This is the part your 11:47 p.m. self tends to forget: you have shopped here before, and you know the selection.

You send the text and he replies warmly, which feels wonderful for approximately twenty minutes before you begin wondering what the warm reply means.

Perhaps he sends a heart.

Excellent.

Now we have a heart.

What are we doing with it?

The conversation might continue until you are lying in bed at 1:08 a.m., examining three words as though one of them contains buried treasure.

Then again, nothing may come out at all. The machine takes the coin and gives you silence.

Very rude machine.

And still, the next evening, you may find yourself wondering whether perhaps you pressed the wrong button.

The funny thing is, you already know what this machine sells. You are just standing there hoping tonight’s button will somehow produce something it has never stocked before—peace, certainty, maybe an entirely different relationship in a small packet.

Instead, there is a decent chance you will get the same old snack with slightly different packaging.

The Coin Can Stay in Your Hand

And this is where staying strong turns out to be much less grand than people make it sound. You are not marching nobly away from the machine forever. Much more often, you simply want very badly to put another coin in and decide not to.

Sometimes that means wandering into the kitchen instead.

The urge still turns up, of course. You may even stand in front of the machine for a while, mentally selecting B6, because wanting the snack and putting in the coin are not the same thing.

You can miss him without texting him. You can wonder how he is without finding out. You can have a perfectly excellent joke that he would absolutely appreciate and allow the poor joke to live the rest of its natural life without being sent anywhere.

And nothing terrible happens, which is the mildly disappointing secret of the whole thing. The urge makes a great deal of noise for a while, but if you do not immediately hand it your phone, it eventually wanders off and finds something else to do.

Every time that happens, the machine becomes a little less interesting. Not because the snacks have changed or somebody finally unplugged it, but because you begin remembering how you felt after the last few purchases.

Then one night you may walk past it without stopping—not heroically, not with violins, but simply because you are busy thinking about something else.

The coin is still yours. The machine is still there. Your ex is still right there in your phone, perfectly textable.

And for once, that is exactly what makes the moment so satisfying.

You could press the button.

And you just do not.