sigh...
sigh....
I have been mulling over this post and mulling over this post—over and over. I have contemplated what to write for days and days. No, not writer’s block, but rather writer’s flood. My mind races. It is a known fact. My mind overanalyzes everything. Also, a known fact. My brain perseverates and picks apart every thought, every conversation, every decision, every lament… All known. All gifts and blessings and pure torture.
A little while ago, someone said to me, “You don’t know what it’s like to be me.” Well, for sure no one knows what it is truly like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I didn’t respond to the comment except to simply say, “No, I don’t.” In the days that followed—as I replayed the conversation over and over-and OVER in my mind, I wanted to scream back (to that person, to others, to whom exactly, I’m not sure): “And you don’t know what it is like to be me.” But, then again… “me” has changed so much—sometimes, I don’t know what it is like to be me.
While we don’t really know what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes—aren’t we looking for a connection? Aren’t we looking and hoping for a person to say, “yeah, I know how that feels…” “I have been there, and I know it is hard…” “I have been through something similar.”
Last week, my phone died. Yes, I have a new phone, but in the dead phone, I lost over 12, 000 text messages-messages that date back to September 2011. While that date is just a little over 365 days ago, it feels like years and years ago. That person was beginning a new school year, teaching first grade, seven months pregnant, taking a semester off of classes, prepping a nursery, about to celebrate her first of three baby showers, surrounded by loving friends and family. From that time, the text messages captured so much of what was going on in my life.
texts about Baby Z kicking
texts to my teammates getting ready for my maternity leave
messages about contractions (that never were really contractions)
messages from my mom telling me to rest
texts from my husband telling me he loved me and how excited he was
texts from friends checking in on me, on my ankles (swelling), on my constant tears
…there were texts that captured every moment of the last 2 months of my pregnancy…all the way up to the day I went into the hospital to be induced…and all the moments after she was born—congrats, well wishes, how are you feeling, You’re a mom!....
I lost all of those texts…all of them. Gone. All of the words…all of those messages and conversations…vanished.
…but she is here, the joy is here, my family is here.
In the months that followed after she was born…there were many, many conversations between my friends and I as I navigated this thing called “motherhood.” All those supportive words, funny messages, and everyday chit chat-discussions about all the things my daughter was doing-all the sleep I was not getting…gone. Gone. Gone.
…but those feelings of love and encouragement have stayed—the funny stories, they remain…
….and then so much changed. My world shifted…the job I left was not the job I returned to… and there were hundreds of messages that chronicled all of the muddy waters that swirled at my feet…over and over. I saved all of those messages, but I could never read them again… because in them …were the words of relationships that were changing,dissolving in those same muddy waters…
And now, those messages, they too, are gone-forever. And the relationships… …. ….I don’t know. I don’t know.
….and in those hundreds of messages, there were also relationships that grew-that evolved-that strengthened in words of support, of encouragement, of belief.
Those messages are gone, too…but the little blossoms have continued to bloom.
And then the summer came—the one I have written about—the one that left me wishing, missing. I lost those messages, too… and it forced me to realize that my friend –the one who died—is really gone, even though I hadn’t truly believed it…now, I don’t even have her texts to read. Gone. Forever. Forever.
…but her impact on my life is here with me…forever.
In the last two months, the texts were all over the place…because the author has been all over the place.
harried, confused, unsettled, happy, elated, exhausted, peaceful, removed, joyful, quiet, angry, busy, overwhelmed, hurt, helpful, needy, overzealous, anxious, frustration, relieved, loving… I don’t feel the absence of them…because all of it is still within me now.today.
And yet still-- there were so many other messages…so many, many, many…
I lost messages that should never have been sent-
-words that should not have been said. I lost messages that were personal, private.
I lost messages with:
recipes, pictures, phone numbers
I lost messages with:
secrets, promises, apologies
There is a part of me that feels heartbroken by this bizarre loss of technology and a part of me that feels found –released somehow. …I know … call me crazy (well, most do).
I don’t know if anyone knows what it is like to be me…but my phone and those 12,000 messages might have offered a glimpse. I suspect if we all read each other’s text logs, maybe we would have greater understanding, huh? But, as I have often said to my single friends: “texting is not dating” …so, texting and the messages that follow aren’t really our relationships…and I didn’t really lose anything with my phone, right? sigh....sigh....
perhaps...lesson for this week: write letters J use the phone J send a card J meet for coffee (who am I kidding--wine.) J
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