i had a group chat i kept "alive" for two years by being the one who always texted first. what got me was realizing my brain treated silence from them as an emergency to fix instead of information to notice, because a nervous system wired for approval reads distance as danger, not data. i recently picked up a book called "for those of you who feel invisible" while trying to solve that issue and there's a part about how chasing costs you the exact energy real connection needs to land when it shows up. i stopped texting first for three weeks straight. two people never noticed. one person finally did, and that's the friendship i actually kept. <3