That time of year when I’m beginning to delete messages to clear up storage on my phone. It’s a very daunting activity. Having to transport your mind back to a time as far as two years to see who you’ve contacted. Who you used to talk to. The numbers from thankless gigs you had work to pay the rent you could barely afford. The number of friends who have sort of become strangers or friends you see ever so often but forget you have the number of.
Via these contacts, I reminisce on a former self who I barely recognize despite messages being under a year old. Reliving trauma to trauma back to back, knowing this rollercoaster ride hasn’t stopped for a very long time via these contacts. I get from 2021 to 2022. I clench my heart, for I know that’s when shit began hitting the fan at a swift velocity. From January to February, I was barely a person, under the thumb of a service industry job that stripped me from my self-worth. February to March was a seismic whiplash for messages. Some texts end there. End at a:Â
sorry I can’t come to my anniversary party
sorry for your loss
You forget about the people who reach out to you. You forget about the people who cared. In most cases, you remember everyone who didn’t. One week being on top of the world, celebrating a major career achievement to the week following having to say goodbye to the first person who truly understood you. Deleting those messages. Messages from folks you don’t even know anymore. Messages from people you see on a blue moon. Messages from people who says there'll be there for you but disappears without a trace. Messages people who you have been trying to make plans with for over as long as your dad has been dead and you're trying to push an effort for more than them. Messages from people who have transformed from a friend to an acquaintance.Â
Then later, you scroll. You scroll further, seeing how many times YOU reached out to others. How you had to see some people you felt you were close to giving a lick of a shit about you. Conversations you had to force to create a form of solace. Conversations with family who don’t feel like family. Conversations with friends who don’t feel like friends. Come to grips with the relationships you share with people who don’t see you the way a few do. The way that he did. So we delete it. Delete conversations and forget them all. Forget about the ones who sent blanket statements and disregarded your soul. Saving up the storage on this heavy heart and this cracked phone. There’ll come a day when those contacts will earn your trust again when their name will become a number but now we delete conversations. We'll do others the way they do you, become an object full of ones and o's.