The notification came in while I was folding laundry. Then another. Then three more before I could smooth out a single pillowcase.
I loved these women. Genuinely. We’d met in a writing workshop two years earlier, stayed in touch through birthdays and breakups and book recommendations. The group chat had started as a lifeline—a place to drop the raw stuff, the 2am can’t-sleep thoughts, the wins too small to announce anywhere else.
But somewhere between month six and month eighteen, it had become something else.
Forty-seven messages on a Tuesday. Sixty-two on a Thursday. I’d wake up to entire conversations I’d missed, inside jokes that had formed while I slept, plans that had been made and unmade before I’d even opened my eyes.
I started muting.
The Muting
At first, just for an hour. Then for the afternoon. Then until tomorrow.
The muting felt like holding my breath underwater. I could still see the notification count climbing—12, 19, 34—but the sound was gone. The constant chirping that had started to live inside my ribcage even when my phone was in another room.
I didn’t tell them I’d muted. That felt like a betrayal, like showing up to dinner but wearing earplugs.
But my shoulders started to drop. Just a little. Enough that I noticed.
I could finish my coffee before it went cold. I could read three pages of my book without checking what I was missing. I could sit in my car in the grocery store parking lot and just sit, without the phantom buzz of someone needing me to weigh in on whether they should text him back.
The guilt was immediate. And loud.
These were my people. They were going through things. Real things. And I was over here choosing silence like some kind of selfish monk.
But underneath the guilt, something quieter: relief.
What I Couldn’t Name Then
I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but my nervous system had been screaming for months.
Every ping was a tiny jolt. A doorbell. A hand on my shoulder. A voice saying Look at me, respond to me, hold this feeling with me right now.
Forty-seven times a day.
I started noticing how my jaw clenched when I opened the app. How my breath went shallow. How I’d scroll through, trying to catch up, my heart rate ticking up with each unread message, and then I’d close it feeling like I’d just run a mile but hadn’t moved at all.
It wasn’t the content. It was the constant-ness. The way the chat had become a second job I hadn’t applied for, a presence that never clocked out.
I read something once about how highly sensitive people process information more deeply, how our brains are working overtime even when we’re just existing. The group chat was like handing that already-overloaded system forty-seven more tasks before breakfast.
I kept the app muted for two weeks. Then three.
And then one night, sitting on my kitchen floor with my back against the dishwasher and my Lavender roll-on pressed to my wrists, I left.
The Leaving
No announcement. No explanation. Just a quiet exit on a Wednesday at 9pm.
I stared at the screen for a full minute after I hit “leave group.” waiting for regret. Waiting for panic.
Instead: silence.
Real silence. Not the muted kind where the count still climbs. Actual absence.
My chest cracked open. I cried, but not sad crying. Relief crying. The kind that comes when you’ve been holding something too heavy for too long and you finally set it down.
Two of them texted me privately. Kind texts. Are you okay? Did something happen?
I didn’t know how to say: nothing happened. Everything was fine. I just couldn’t carry the weight of all of us all the time anymore.
So I said I needed some space. Which was true. Which was the most true thing I’d said in months.
I just couldn’t carry the weight of all of us all the time anymore.
What Came After
The first week felt like I’d gone partially deaf. I kept reaching for my phone, phantom-checking for messages that weren’t coming.
But then: mornings without dread. Coffee that stayed hot. Books that got finished.
I started noticing my own thoughts again. Not the reactive, rapid-fire, keeping-up thoughts. The slow ones. The ones that only come when there’s room.
I remembered that I actually like long stretches of quiet. That I don’t need to be accessible every minute. That my attention is not a public resource.
The same way I’d learned to reduce overstimulation at home, I was learning to protect my energy online. To recognize that just because a space is digital doesn’t mean it’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not taking something from me.
I still loved those women. I still do. But I loved myself more when I wasn’t constantly interrupted by their lives.
We’re still friends. We text one-on-one now. Smaller, slower, more intentional. The kind of connection that doesn’t require me to be on call.
And I’ve learned that needing to step back isn’t cruelty. It’s just honesty. The kind that protects everyone involved, because I’m not pretending I have capacity I don’t have. I’m not resenting them for asking me to show up in a way that costs me too much.
Leaving the group chat taught me that I get to choose. That “staying connected” doesn’t have to mean “constantly available.” that sometimes the most loving thing I can do—for them, for me—is to stop performing presence and start actually resting.
The way I need time to reset after socializing, I needed time to reset from the constant hum of digital closeness. And once I gave myself permission to take it, everything else got quieter too.
More Stories From the Series
If this one stayed with you, here are a few more soft, honest essays from the same chapter of my life:
- Why I Bought a Reading Chair Instead of a Treadmill
- Why I Started Keeping a Tiny Notebook in My Pocket
- How Lighting One Candle Saved My Worst Week
- A Letter to the Woman Who Said Yes to Everything
For anyone who finds comfort in the science behind these soft, lived experiences, The APA’s research on workplace burnout is a gentle place to begin.
Where I Am Now
I’m not in any group chats. My phone doesn’t buzz all day. I miss things, sure—but I’m here for my own life in a way I wasn’t before. And that feels more honest than anything I was performing in those forty-seven messages a day.
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