I would wait minutes, maybe even hours, or days, and if I ever had to, months or years for you to finally just answer my texts. Yes, maybe I was a little crazy, maybe I overdid things or even came up with the craziest scenarios in my head. I don’t know what else I should have done when you neglected my attention to you. I got excited when my phone vibrated but then disappointed when i saw it wasn’t you that rang me. I wanted to text you more, talk with you more, and catch up on our lives because that’s what best friends do. I mean we always had days where we just sat down and texted each other for hours chatting about the silliest things. I would be smiling and laughing at my phone while everyone else would just stare at me. But now, what happened? I texted you daily but our conversations became foggy. Giving me cold and dry responses that I couldn’t steer through. And I did ask you if something was wrong. But I would get the same excuse over and over again. “I’m just tired, don’t worry about me.” But I never stopped worrying. And I kept texting even on days or weeks when I wouldn’t get a reply. Along with the fog, the distance started on growing as you slowly sped away from me.. I never gave up on closing the gap between us, because I valued this friendship more than anything else. Because I always told myself that I’ll be waiting for you.
The first thing to do in the morning is check my phone. First thing to do after breakfast, check my phone again. The first thing to do after getting off the train, check my phone another time, and so on. Yes, I wouldn’t let go of a single second of my phone just so I could immediately text you when you finally responded. I wrote you an entire silly story thinking that it may make you happy or we can finally talk about something. I understand that it’s hard to keep in touch from two different places in the world and I guess I may have expected too much because all I really got was an “Okay that’s funny”, and I responded to that by saying “I know right!” followed by “How are you btw?” and so I waited another 2 days just to receive “I’m ok, you?” It felt like a pigeon was delivering a letter to me. What happened to all the passionate, funny, and exciting conversations we had? It’s like a big thunderstorm hovered over me and made everything so gray, cold, and depressing. It hurts, you hurt me for the first time. Something I would have never expected. So, I left you to read, because I was getting tired. Tired of being treated like a nobody. Like I never contributed anything to you, like my efforts never mattered. You forgot who I was. I layed down on my bed for every night that has passed after we stopped talking and asked myself questions while staring at the ceiling. What did I do to get treated this way? Am I to blame that you’re like that? Maybe I could have handled this situation better? Maybe we both could have.
I saw your Instagram story with your friends and you looked very happy in it. I can’t deny it made me smile. What made me smile was how you smiled, because that’s what I imagined when you texted me, the face behind the screen. So I kept staring at it, forgetting where I was, and what was around me, it was just you on my screen and me. And when I snapped out of it I realized that I missed my train stop by about five other stations. I turned off my phone because of how distracted I was. While waiting for the train, there was so much that I needed to process. Here I am missing you, missing what we had and what suddenly disappeared. I smiled and cried at the same time. Each day that passed I would scroll through our old conversations remembering what we talked about. I would take hours to read everything, from where it started to all the way down when it ended. I’d spend hours just looking at my phone, looking at content on TikTok and Instagram I could relate to, listening to the most depressing music that would remind me how much pain I was in and how much I emotionally suffered. Here I turn into an isolated individual losing interest in everything and only focusing on getting distracted through social media to push away all the pain. Being on the phone would be the first and last thing I would do throughout the day. There was no escape. I was so locked into it, it slowly took over me. Things got out of control so quickly and all I had to cope with was my phone and headphones. I wanted to stay in my own little world and away from people because I was too afraid to get hurt again, too afraid to speak up or even make eye contact. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, at least not with anyone other than you.
The attachment to my phone became greater than I ever expected like it became part of my own body. My only happiness was trapped in there and it was the only thing that kept me close to you. But I couldn’t live like that forever. It was time for me to change my lifestyle all over again and try to give myself a second chance in life by working on myself. That one day where my phone ran out of charge, I had to rely on something else to gratify myself. So, I went on and saw joy in people, joy in the environment and what surrounds me. I felt a breeze blowing through my hair, and gazing at the clouds while I heard birds sing and fly like planes sorrowing the sky. I can make myself happy with something else other than just relying on technology to resolve my problems. I was taught pain but learned how to heal. I learned to forgive and slowly to forget. I learned how to not rely and cope with just technology. I learned how to be patient. It has been a long journey but it came to an end, an end that I’ve been waiting for minutes, hours, days and months.
Works Cited
Body Paragraph 2: In this paragraph, I draw inspiration from Ray Bradbury’s “The Murderer” where he stated “The telephone changes your meaning to you. First thing you know, you’ve made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone’s such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I didn’t have any time of my own.” (Bradbury).
In-text citation: Unknown, “The Strangers Project“
“I always told myself that I’ll be waiting for you” (Unknown)