I congratulated my friend, then muted the chat

The message arrived between two work emails. There was a photograph, a row of hearts, and then the group chat started moving faster than I could read. My friend was pregnant. I wanted to be happy with her. I also wanted everyone to stop typing for a minute.

My cycles have never been especially regular, and lately I have found uncertainty difficult to put down. I had not told this group much about that. To them, this was simply lovely news. There was no reason they should know what else was happening at my desk, or why I was suddenly finding an ordinary congratulatory message so hard to write.

I typed three versions. One sounded much more excited than I felt. Another was so brief that I worried it looked cold. In the end I sent a warm, simple congratulations and put my phone face down. Ten minutes later I turned it over again. There were more messages. I read all of them, felt worse, and wondered why I had done that to myself.

Muting the chat felt surprisingly personal. The app did not ask me to justify it, but I was already making an argument against myself. These were my friends. Nobody had done anything wrong. Surely being a good friend meant being able to manage a few photographs without needing special arrangements.

Later, I sent my friend a separate message. I told her I was glad she had shared her news and that I was having a difficult stretch of my own. I said I might be slower in the group for a while. I did not give her a medical explanation or ask her to organise everyone else around me. I also did not add the usual promise that I would be completely fine tomorrow.

Her reply was short. She thanked me for telling her. We then talked about something unrelated that had happened at her work. It was not the grand, perfectly understanding conversation I had rehearsed in my head. It was two friends finding a small amount of room for more than one thing to be true.

I still open the group when I feel able to. Sometimes I enjoy the conversation; sometimes I close it again. I have not found a setting that takes the guilt out of all of this. What has changed is that I no longer think my speed of response is the only way to measure whether I care.

There is a private message sitting in my notes that I can adapt if another friend asks why I have been quiet. It says less than I used to think I owed people. For now, that is enough.