Love letter to my flip phone
Dear flip phone,
Thank you for an amazing year! It was one of the best years of my life — we travelled together, we shared emotional conversations, and most importantly I got to know myself better through you and grow into an improved version of me.
But it wasn’t always this way. I was in a very toxic relationship before you. My ex was smart but not very considerate. I felt stressed, I couldn’t sleep and my mind was always thinking about it. It wasn’t love, it was an obsession and addiction. I had started paying less attention to people around me. I thought my ex was helping me stay connected, or that’s what I told myself, but deep down I wasn’t feeling more connected. Phone conversations had become a way to fill boredom and to not truly care about someone. I couldn’t remember the last time I had called someone while I wasn’t doing anything else but focused solely on listening to them. I knew something was missing in that relationship that no amount of scrolling could fix. My body had started feeling the stress too. And that’s when I decide to take a break from my ex.
At first, I thought just a couple of months. Our 8 year relationship was strong enough to survive a break. And why stop on my ex-phone, I decided to cut out all its friends from my life — social media, video streaming services, even unintentional and non-work related browsing. But it wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be. The very next day, I woke up wanting to reach for it. I had to take help from friends and family so I could distract myself from thinking about its absence. But something happened after three weeks. The panic started subsiding, I felt freer than I had felt in a long time. I felt present. I felt happy.
This two month break is what I need to reevaluate what kind of relationship did I want next. Who did I want to be with? Why? And more importantly who did I want to be in this next relationship? I knew I wanted to feel like myself, present, in control. I wanted a mature and healthy relationship, so I decided to try something that was the complete opposite of my usual type — a flip phone.
I remember the day when I first saw you, flip phone. It wasn’t love at first sight, but a calculated love affair. To be honest, you weren’t my first choice but I decided to go with you because you felt like the best choice given my carrier and budget constraints. I knew the likelihood of me finding anything better was low. After all, most of the good ones were off market and the new ones were just not right for me. It was time to take a leap of faith and go with something outside my comfort zone.
At first, I was so excited. I couldn’t stop showing you off. I was so proud of my decision, of us. You seemed perfect and all the features you had seemed enough. The ones you didn’t, seemed like they didn’t matter. I remember taking a trial first picture with that camera and thinking “how old school and adorable”. I think all my friends noticed how I would flip you open with style any time I got a phone call in public.
But like any long term relationship, after some time, I realized you had flaws too. And a lot of them. Every group message came as a separate message so I had no clue who was replying to what and whom. Oh and MMS! I felt cheated when I found out about your heavy use of MMS. Even when I got over MMS, texting was just so painful. Why couldn’t you be like other phones and have a regular keypad? Or GPS? Or a better camera? I saw my friend showing off her new iPhone and I won’t lie, I had second thoughts. I wondered if I had made a mistake. I felt there was no spontaneity anymore and I couldn’t just look up things in the middle of a conversation. I couldn’t just decide to drive to some coffee shop and look up directions for it on the way. I always had to plan and be prepared.
But then I started noticing how much you really cared about me. You were making me into a better and more confident person. Remember the time I actually noticed a human being sitting depressed at the grocery shop and had a conversation with him because I wasn’t staring into your face? Or the time I decided to trust my driving and not second guess my directional skills because I didn’t have access to your GPS? Or the many evenings, I spent with friends instead of you learning to brew kombucha, book folding, trying new recipes?
You gave me space to be more authentic and present. You never kept me from talking to people by providing me random information at random times. You never pushed me to connect with our “friends”, you let me look howsoever I liked and not constantly made me worry about how I might look in a selfie, and you never distracted me when I was driving. With you, I felt relaxed and at home even when I was traveling unlike with my ex-phones where I felt like I was on a go even when I was relaxing. You helped me appreciate my friends and family more, cherish more moments and be less distracted. I slept better, felt calmer and more focused. The stress and the sinking feeling that the information overload was causing was gone.
Thank you, dear flip phone, for keeping me safe and sane. You were a good companion for the year and a half we were together. You taught me so much about boundaries and being present. And now that I have finally moved on to a newer relationship (I know the age difference really got us!), I feel those lessons of boundaries are what are really helping me be more successful in my current relationship with my new phone. I don’t know what the future holds (I am not committed to my current model either) but I know I will forever be grateful for our time together. ❤
XOXO,
Sumedha
