It's strange how a single word can feel heavier than a thousand conversations. Hello.
Two syllables. So common, so ordinary. Yet, in that moment, typing it to her felt like trying to lift the entire weight of the universe.
For nights after seeing her profile, I lingered at the edge of silence. I would open the message box, stare at the blank space waiting for words, and then close it again. My mind rehearsed endless versions of how it could go.
"Hi, I came across your profile…"
Too formal.
"Hey, I really liked that line you posted…"
Too eager.
"Hello :)"
Too plain.
Every draft felt wrong. Every word felt too much or too little. And in the end, silence always won.
But silence is also a dangerous companion. It lingers, it grows, it suffocates. The longer I waited, the stronger the restlessness became. It was as if something inside me knew that if I didn't say something, even just once, this chance would slip away forever.
So, one evening, after hours of overthinking, I finally typed it.
Hello.
My thumb hovered over the send button, my heart pounding with a rhythm I could hear in my ears. It felt ridiculous—how could something so small make me feel so much? And yet, I sent it.
Seconds stretched into minutes. Minutes into an hour. My phone screen stayed dark.
I told myself not to care. Not to expect. After all, I was just a stranger in her world. Why would she respond? She had no reason to. Maybe my message would dissolve into the sea of ignored texts, lost forever.
And then—my phone lit up.
Her reply was short, simple, and yet it felt like a door had opened.
"Hey."
I stared at that single word for what felt like eternity. My chest felt lighter, almost dizzy. A smile crept onto my face, uninvited, unstoppable. She had replied. She had seen me.
The conversation that followed wasn't extraordinary by any measure. We talked about the most ordinary things—how her day had been, what she was studying, the music she listened to. I told her little pieces about myself, careful, hesitant, like placing fragile glass on a shelf.
But something magical hid beneath the ordinariness. Every message felt charged, alive. I found myself rereading her words, not because they were extraordinary, but because they were hers.
Hours passed unnoticed. The night deepened around me, but I stayed awake, my phone glowing in the dark, carrying her laughter in words, her pauses in dots, her presence across the distance.
There was a moment, somewhere between midnight and dawn, when she sent a message with a little laughing emoji at the end. It was such a small thing, yet I stared at it like it was treasure. That emoji, that laugh—it was proof that she was comfortable, even if just a little. Proof that this wasn't just a polite exchange, but something with warmth beneath it.
By the time sleep finally crept into my eyes, I realized something had changed forever. What had begun as hesitation, as nervous uncertainty, had bloomed into a connection. A fragile thread had been woven between us.
The first hello had been spoken.
And with it, the silence that once stood between us was gone.