How to End a Random Chat Politely

There was a half sentence still sitting in the box when I closed the laptop, something like "yeah that makes sense, I guess for me it's more" and then nothing, I never finished it and I never sent it. The cursor was blinking after "more." I remember that because I watched it blink twice before I shut the lid. The cup next to the keyboard had gone cold an hour before that, the tea bag still in it, the string stuck to the rim. My socks were half off, one of them, the heel part bunched under my foot, and I didn't fix it. The fridge did its thing where it clicks on and hums and you only notice when it stops. It stopped right as I closed the tab.

I have gotten this wrong more times than I can count. Once, years ago now, on some random chat thing, I typed out this long goodbye, like "hey it was really good talking to you, I have to go now but take care of yourself," all of that, and the person just said "ok" and I sat there feeling like I'd over-explained a thing nobody asked me to explain. Another time I said I had a call. I did not have a call. It was eleven at night. Who has a call. I think I even added a fake detail, said "my friend's calling about a thing tomorrow," and then I felt worse, because now there was a friend and a thing and a tomorrow that didn't exist, and the other person said "no worries!! go go" and was so nice about it that I felt like I'd lied to someone who didn't deserve it.

That's the part that gets me. They were usually fine. The other person was nice but I was tired, that was most of it, most nights, no plot, no insult, nothing went wrong. I was just tired and the clock said the number it says when you should be asleep. And being tired isn't a thing you can hand to a stranger as a reason, or it is, but it feels thin, it feels like "I'm bored of you" even when it isn't that.

There was one who asked too many follow-up questions. Not in a bad way. They were curious, properly curious, every answer I gave turned into two more questions, where did you grow up, oh and do you still go back, and what's it like there now, and I could feel myself running out, like the battery icon when it goes from white to that orange. I wasn't going to keep up. I kept glancing at the little tab title at the top, it just said the site name and a number for unread or new or whatever, and I kept thinking I should say something and then answering one more question instead. The lamp was the only light on. I'd eaten half a thing of leftover rice straight from the container with the lid bent back and it was on the desk going colder next to the tea, two cold things, and I thought, I am going to be here until two if I don't just.

If I don't just what. That was always the gap. The close button is right there. It is literally at hand, top corner, you don't need a ceremony to press it, you don't need to build a little story first. But I'd build the story anyway. I'd write the call, the friend, the early morning, the headache. And the funny thing, or not funny, the annoying thing is that the more I explained the longer it took, so the thing I was trying to escape from got longer because of the escaping.

The change came in slowly, no clean line where before became after. Sometime this past winter maybe. There was a night on Knot.chat where I had a sentence going, a wrong one, I'd typed "I think I'm gonna had to" and the typo just sat there, "gonna had to," and instead of fixing it I deleted the whole line and wrote one short thing. I don't even want to make it sound like a decision. I think I was just too tired to do the long version. So I wrote, basically, "I'm going to head off, this was nice." That's it. And then I closed it. And the room stayed exactly as it was, no consequence to it at all. The fridge clicked. My foot was cold.

So now I keep that one line. It's almost always the same words, "I'm gonna head off, this was nice," sometimes "good night" on the end, sometimes not. I don't add the reason. There's no need to invent excuses, I've decided, or I haven't decided, I just don't do it anymore, which isn't the same as deciding but the result looks the same from outside. If they ask why I'll say tired, one word, true. Most don't ask. The curious one, the one with all the questions, if I had that night again I think I'd say the line after the third or fourth question instead of the fortieth, and they'd have been fine, they were already fine, I was the one making it heavy.

It still feels a little rude. I want to be honest about that part because I don't think it stopped feeling rude, I just stopped letting the rude feeling run the whole show. You close a door on a person mid-sentence, sort of, even if it's your own sentence you're closing on. The "more" that I never finished. I do wonder sometimes what I would have typed after "more." Probably nothing good. Probably just filler.

Tonight the cup is the same cup, different tea, also going cold because I am writing this instead of drinking it, which is its own kind of stupid. The keyboard has a key that's slightly louder than the others, the L I think, and I can hear it now in the quiet. The battery is at thirty one. I'm not in a chat right now. I just wanted to write down the part about the half sentence before I forgot it, the cursor blinking after "more," because for years I thought the trouble was finding the right words to leave and it turns out the words were never the trouble at all, what stuck was, I don't know. I'll figure out how to say it some other night. The line is enough for now. I'm gonna head off. This was nice.