An incredible thing happened today. I handed over my phone to my replacement, which meant I had to delete 300 text messages I've been collecting since August. There were messages that I had written, messages that I had received, a few that I had never sent. I sat there, scrolling, pouring through my typed, segmented, carefully, often pain-stakingly composed life over the past 10 months. Rereading these dispatches, I traced the arc of friendships. I watched a relationship spark, reliving the uncertainty with which those early messages were composed, hastily deleting the ones where it stumbled, lingering over the triumphs. I found movie quotes and song lyrics from my brother, words of encouragement from my parents, wisdom from a sage and funny FUNNY quips from friends long since moved away. Messages that made me laugh, messages that made me blush, messages that I wanted to read over and over. I sat for almost an hour, hypnotized, accompanied only by the tight clicking of my keypad. Delete. Delete? Deleting.
In the end, everyone was just a number again. The way they had begun. As I erased my contacts, messages became unmoored, belonging only to a string of digits. I hesitated, not wanting to lose these markers, these relics of my life so far.
And then I pressed OK.
And then the phone was empty.
0704913219
ReplyDeleteMemories will last as long as we live in thoughtfulness.