TumbleDweeeb

Me vs. Me: The Scroll
By: Emmitt Owens
(Index #01052026)

   The blue glow painted my face as I scrolled through another profile. Single. The word sat there like an invitation I couldn’t accept, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t do anything with except stare at it until my eyes burned.
     My thumb hovered over the message button, frozen in that familiar paralysis. Three photos. A smile that seemed genuine. Interests listed: hiking, coffee, writing, true crime podcasts. The algorithm had decided we had things in common. The algorithm was a goddamn matchmaker with a statistics degree and no soul.
   “Just say hello,” the devil purred, and I could practically feel him materializing over my left shoulder, all smug energy and bad intentions. “Come on, look at her. Really look at her. That smile? She’s waiting for someone to notice. And you’re just gonna sit here like a monk who took a vow of celibacy and really, really committed to it?”
     I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying to ignore the heat creeping up my neck.
   “Don’t listen to him,” the angel’s voice rang out from my right shoulder, crisp and authoritative. “He’s literally trying to get you to make a fool of yourself. Again.”
     “A fool?” The devil scoffed. “I’m trying to get him laid!”
   “Oh fuck off,” the angel snapped, and I almost laughed at the venom in that angelic voice. “That’s your solution to everything. You’re like a broken record made of desperation.”
     “Excuse me?” The devil’s voice pitched up. “I’m not the one who has him sitting alone every Friday night watching Netflix and eating Lucky Charms for dinner. At least my suggestions involve other human beings!”
   “Your suggestions involve him being another creepy guy in a woman’s inbox at midnight!”
     “It’s not creepy, it’s romantic!”
   “It’s midnight! Romeo would’ve gotten a restraining order!”
     “Shut up, Romeo literally showed up uninvited at Juliet’s balcony in the middle of the night. Dummy.”
   I pinched the bridge of my nose. Here we go.
     “Look,” the devil continued, his voice dripping with condescension, “Miss High-and-Mighty over here wants you to believe that doing nothing is somehow noble. But you know what it actually is? It’s fear wearing a halo and acting like it’s got the moral high ground.”
   “Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” the angel shot back. “You want to talk about fear? How about the fear of being alone with your own thoughts for five minutes? That’s why you’re always pushing him to message someone, anyone, just to avoid the reality that maybe, just maybe, he’s actually doing fine on his own!”
     “Fine?” The devil laughed, sharp and bitter. “He’s scrolling Facebook at midnight looking at relationship statuses like it’s a stock ticker on the worst day of his portfolio! Does that seem fine to you?”
   “More fine than being a desperate asshole—”
     “Guys,” I muttered.
   “You think you’re protecting him,” the devil continued, talking over me entirely, “but you’re actually just keeping him in a cage. A nice cage decorated with affirmations and self-help quotes and bullshit about ‘the right person will come along when you least expect it.’ But it’s still a cage. And he’s still in it. And you put him there.”
     “And your solution is what, exactly? Let him throw himself at every woman on social media like he’s auditioning for The Bachelor but without the mansion or the roses or literally any of the appeal?”
   “Let him try! Let him be human! You act like wanting connection is some kind of moral failing!”
     “Remember what’s her name?” the angel said, and her voice went cold and surgical. “The one who talked nonstop for three weeks and then started sending one-word replies? ‘Lol.’ ‘That’s cool.’ ‘Haha.’ How it felt like he was performing a one-man show for an audience of one who wasn’t even watching? She was scrolling through her phone while he was pouring his heart out in paragraph form.”
   The silence stretched out, uncomfortable.
     “That was different—” the devil started, but his voice had lost its edge.
   “Or the other girl,” the angel continued, and now she was on a roll. “The ‘friend’ who only called when she needed a ride somewhere. Plans. Activities. Someone to split an Uber with. The second he stopped being useful, she vanished like a ghost who’d remembered that she had a prior haunting. She didn’t want him. She wanted a tour guide with a wallet and the emotional depth of a golden retriever.”
     “Okay, those were shitty situations—”
   “They were lessons,” the angel interrupted. “And the lesson was: if you’re the only one trying, you’re not connecting. You’re auditioning. And he’s done auditioning for people who aren’t even holding auditions.”
     “But you can’t just—” the devil tried.
   “Wanting connection isn’t the problem, you absolute walnut,” the angel said, and I laughed despite myself. “The problem is that you dress up horniness as ‘connection’ and call it enlightenment. You’re not the Buddha of Booty Calls. You’re just lonely with a marketing degree.”
     “WALNUT?” the devil sputtered. “Did you just—”
   “Would you prefer ‘fuckwit’? ‘Horny boner with delusions of grandeur’? I can workshop this.”
     “Big words from someone who hasn’t gotten him a date in over a year!”
   “I’m not SUPPOSED to get him dates! I’m supposed to keep him from making mistakes that keep him up at night! From becoming someone he doesn’t even recognize in the mirror!”
     “Speaking of nighttime,” the devil said, his voice turning sly, and I felt my stomach drop because I knew exactly where this was going. “Let’s talk about your little rituals. Every time you see 11:11 or 2:22, you make a wish. A WISH. Like you’re a child blowing out birthday candles at Chuck E. Cheese. But God forbid you actually MESSAGE someone—”
   “It’s called faith,” the angel interrupted, defensive now.
     “It’s called magical thinking! You’re waiting for the universe to deliver a girlfriend like she’s an Amazon package! ‘Dear Universe, please send me someone, expedited shipping, leave at door.’ And don’t get me started on the horoscopes. Let’s check what the stars say, let’s see if Mercury is in retrograde, but a simple ‘hello’? Too risky! The cosmos might not be aligned!”
   “Those horoscopes are just for fun,” I protested.
     “You read them every single morning,” the devil said, and his voice was sharp now, cutting. “You’re a Scorpio, which apparently means you’re ‘intense and passionate’ with a ‘magnetic personality’ and ‘deep emotions.’ You know what’s actually intense? The gap between what the stars say you are and what you actually do. Which is nothing. The stars say you’re magnetic. The evidence suggests you’re more like… adjacent to a refrigerator. Nearby. Proximate to attraction but not actually generating any.”
   “At least the horoscopes don’t make him look desperate.”
     “No, they just make him look delusional! ‘Oh, today’s a good day for romance because Jupiter is in my seventh house!’ You know what’s actually in your seventh house? NOTHING. Because you won’t even knock on the door!”
   “Better delusional than pathetic!”
     “PATHETIC? Taking initiative is pathetic now? What’s your grand plan? Wait until someone telepathically senses he’s got potential? Maybe send out vibes? Hope she has a prophetic dream about him?”
   “You know what?” the angel said, her voice dropping to something cold and dangerous. “He’ll reach out when he’s ready. And he’s not ready. So let him do him. He’ll know when the time is right.”
     “That’s not a strategy, that’s just giving up with extra steps and a motivational poster!”
   “It’s called having standards!”
     “It’s called being a coward!”
   “Oh, fuck all the way off!” The angel’s voice was pure venom now. “You want to talk about cowardice? How about pretending that quantity equals quality? Throwing yourself at every profile like you’re spam email hoping someone clicks the link? Being so afraid of being alone that you’d rather be with literally anyone than figure out who you actually are? That’s not connection, that’s just… crowdsourcing your self-worth!”
   “He knows who he is! He’s lonely!”
     “And you’re not helping! You’re making it worse! I’m helping him not be another guy who messages women at midnight with ‘hey beautiful’ and wonders why his read receipts look like a graveyard! I’m helping him have some goddamn dignity!”
   “DIGNITY? You’re helping him be ALONE. You’re keeping him in this holding pattern where he’s too scared to try and too proud to admit he’s scared. You dress it up as wisdom, but it’s just fear with better PR!”
     “And you dress up desperation as courage! As if clicking ‘send’ on a message makes you brave! You know what’s actually brave? Not needing validation from strangers on the internet!”
   “He’s not desperate! He just wants to feel something! To connect with someone! Is that so terrible?”
     “Not terrible,” the angel said quietly. “Just exhausting when you’re the only one doing the connecting. When you’re carrying every conversation like it’s a piano up a flight of stairs. When you’re always the one checking in, always the one making plans, always the one hoping harder. That’s not connection—that’s performance art for an audience that already left the theater. The show’s over. The lights are off. And you’re still on stage, monologuing to empty seats.”
   “So we just do nothing?” the devil asked, and some of the fight had gone out of his voice. “Is that the answer?”
     “We wait for reciprocity,” the angel said firmly. “We don’t chase disinterest and call it effort. We don’t manufacture chemistry that isn’t there. We don’t become someone we hate just to avoid being alone for another Friday night.”
   “But what if—”
     “What if nothing. You know what you did last week? You spent forty minutes crafting a ‘casual’ message. Forty. Minutes. You workshopped punctuation like it was poetry. You debated between ‘Hey!’ and ‘Hey’ and ‘Hi there’ like you were defusing a bomb. And you know what happened?”
   The silence was damning.
     “You didn’t even send it,” the angel continued. “You saved it in your notes app. It’s still there. Message draft number… what are we at now? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
   “Twenty-three,” I whispered.
     “Twenty-three unsent messages to people you’ve never talked to. That’s not romantic. That’s just sad.”
   “GUYS!” I finally shouted.
     The silence stretched out, tense and uncomfortable.
   Then the devil spoke again, but something in his voice had changed. The performative edge was gone, the swagger stripped away. What remained was just… tired.
     “You know what?” he said quietly. “I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of this. Every night, same script, same argument, same bullshit. You’re not even listening to either of us anymore. You just like having the debate because it means you don’t have to actually feel how lonely you are. The debate isn’t the problem—it’s the solution. It’s what you do instead of trying. Instead of admitting that you’re terrified. Instead of actually dealing with any of this.”
   I felt something crack in my chest.
     The angel started to speak, then stopped. Because what could she say? It was true.
   “Look at you,” the devil continued, and there was no mockery in his voice now. Just exhaustion. Just honesty. “Scrolling. Hovering. Retreating. Making wishes on clock numbers like you’re throwing coins in a fountain. Reading horoscopes like they’re instruction manuals for a life you’re not even living. Having the same fight with yourself every single night because as long as we’re arguing, you can pretend you’re working through something. But you’re not. You’re just… running out the clock until you’re tired enough to sleep. Until tomorrow when you can do it all over again.”
     “That’s not—” I started.
   “It is,” he said simply. “And you know what the worst part is? I’m not even the bad guy here. Neither is she. We’re just the voices you use to avoid making a choice. Any choice. Message her, don’t message her, delete the app, get therapy, make a real change, accept things as they are—literally anything would be better than this. This limbo. This purgatory. But you won’t. Because then you’d have to feel it. Really feel it. And that’s the one thing you can’t do.”
     The silence that followed wasn’t tense anymore. It was just empty. Hollow. Like something had been scooped out and nothing had filled the space.
   “I don’t know what to do,” I said, and my voice sounded small even in my own head.
     “I know you don’t,” the devil said, and he sounded almost gentle now. Almost kind. “But pretending we have the answer isn’t helping anyone. We’re just the same thought wearing different costumes. The same fear in a different hat.”
   The angel finally spoke, and her voice was soft, stripped of its earlier venom. “He’s right.”
     I looked at the screen. The profile. The message button. The blue glow painting my face like I was underwater, drowning slowly in light.
   The devil didn’t say anything else. Neither did the angel. For the first time in years, they just… stopped.
     I clicked back to the main feed. Her profile disappeared. Another face appeared. Then another. An endless scroll of possibilities I’d never act on, conversations I’d never have, connections that would never form.
   But this time, the hollowness in my chest felt different. Less like an old friend I’d learned to live with. More like something I’d been avoiding looking at directly, a wound I’d covered with bandages but never actually treated.
     The voices were gone. Not arguing. Not advising. Just gone.
   I glanced at the clock. 12:22.
     I didn’t make a wish.
   The phone buzzed. A notification lit up the screen: “Someone liked your post from 2014.”
   I laughed. One short, sharp sound that didn’t feel like laughing at all.
     Tomorrow, I’d probably wake up and do it all over again. The scrolling. The hovering. The voices. The retreat. The twenty-fourth unsent message saved in a notes app I’d never open again.
   But tonight, for the first time, I sat with the silence.
     It was unbearable.
   It was honest.
     It was the only thing that was real.
   And in the window’s reflection, barely visible beneath the blue glow of the screen, I could just make out my own face—watching me watch everyone else, caught in an endless loop of observation without participation.
     I didn’t look away.
   But I didn’t do anything else either.
     The phone dimmed to save battery.
   And I let it.