Alive on the internet, silent in the chat

He posts. He is in other people’s comments. A story goes up from a room that looks like a life. Your chat stays dark. The contrast is its own injury, because the old story said he was too overwhelmed to speak. Overwhelmed people do sometimes post. They also sometimes have attention for everyone except the person to whom they owe a hard sentence. You do not have to decide which he is in order to feel the sting. The sting is data about where his attention is going.

Out of sight, out of mind is the proverb you are afraid is true. The feed complicates it. You are not out of his sight if he can see that you saw the story. You may be out of the category of people he is willing to be responsible to. Public warmth and private silence can live in the same hour. Simone Weil called attention a rare generosity. A comment on a friend’s photo is a small coin of attention. It is not nothing. It is also not the generosity of turning toward the person he has left in a dark thread.

Do not build a case from a highlight

A feed is an edited room. He may be miserable and still posting, because posting is a habit and misery is not photogenic. He may be fine and posting, which is the possibility that hurts. Use the feed for one question only: is he capable of attention this week? If yes, then the silence in your chat is not a lack of thumbs. It is a direction. Direction is a choice, even when he would describe it as just not knowing what to say. Not knowing what to say is a feeling. Typing something else, elsewhere, is an action.

The comparison trap

You will compare the comment he left a stranger with the silence he left you. The comparison is accurate and poisonous if you live there. Look once. Write the date. Then leave the feed for a week if you can. Repeated looking is a way of staying in a room that has asked you to stand outside. Don’t pick at it is homely advice. Picking keeps the wound open so you can prove it is still there. You already know.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil, letter to Joë Bousquet, 1942

Weil was not writing about stories and ticks. The line still cuts. Generosity of attention is rare because it costs self-forgetting. A public life can be a way of spending attention where it will be applauded, and withholding it where it would cost a hard talk. You are allowed to notice the economy without writing him a essay about it.

One look, then a limit

• Ask only: is he capable of a small kindness this week, somewhere?
• If yes, stop collecting screenshots. The direction is already clear.
• Do not send the post back to him as evidence. He has seen his own life.
• Mute if the looking has become a morning rite. The rite is about you now.

What a reading can use

Bring the contrast in one sentence, not a folder. He is in the world. He is not in the chat. Ask what you want to do with a man whose attention is available and not aimed at the place that hurts. You may want fairness. Fairness may not be on offer. Company while you see that is still worth something. The feed will not become a letter if you watch it long enough.