If you don’t use a dozen emojis and several exclamation points in texts, I WILL think you hate me ??✨☺️? ??

Memes are designed to be relatable, and the most accessible memes of all speak to the crippling sense of fear that everyone secretly hates us. Especially the ones featuring cats photoshopped to look like they've just had to identify the limp, lifeless body of their beloved husband in the morgue. You know, like these:

The despair in their weepy little edited faces, combined with women's neuroses about being barely tolerated by their loved ones COMBINE to give us the most relatable meme of all time. Put on your protective eyewear because the familiarity will hit you like a radioactive flash:

You all hate me, don't you?

You know how some people read Bible verses and they highlight and underline them and put it in their Insta bio because they feel like they've just unlocked the key to their soul??? This is mine. I feel seen, I feel recognized! I am (no, we are!) so desperate to be liked that a text void of lol, !, or ? send me spiraling into an analysis of everything interaction me and the person in question have had since the day we met. I'm convinced I either fucked this up or they've secretly hated me from day one and have been invited along to things and added to group chats out of pity or so they can all mock me later. That's crazy! Like do I really think my besties have put 10-plus years into intense friendship just as the world's longest troll? Yes! I think that and then some! Basically, if you send me a text with a period at the end of it, you better also send me money for an IV of liquid Xanax.

Are you mad at me? :( You want to break up, I know it

Constantly asking a man I'm dating if I'm annoying them is far and away the most annoying thing I could ever do, I know that! And yet, My Strange Addiction is reading way too far into every text I get. The imaginary subtext of texts, if you will ;). I'm not the only psycho I know, though. All of my friends (subcategory: girls and gays) lose their minds over perceived grievances too. Here, a selection of two recent boyfriend interactions:

There is one NOTABLE exception to this rule

Dads text like they're sending military dispatch. YES. OK. AM AT STORE. They have earned this right through hours and hours and hours and hours of conversation with your mother, who you know is physically incapable of telling short stories. Actually, I'd be worried if my dad sent me an emoji. What is the lesson in all of this? Is it to not be a thin-skinned little baby bitch? Is it to be more like our dads? Please let me know, and include some !!!!! when you do it. ?