deleting things and rereading things
29.07.18 | 11:20 am
i'll go through people's social media and reread things i've read a thousand times.
most especially, i go through and reread my own diary or other people's diaries or, mostly, my text messages. and i keep a lot of text messages. i screenshot a lot of things i'd like to keep.
but when my phone crashed the other day, i lost them all, essentially, on that device.
however, i realized that my ipad holds all of my imessage conversations still. conversations i haven't deleted at all, dating back to 2015. (at least, that's as far back as i got with it.)
a few messages or screenshots of note:
-a screenshot of alex's message saying before our first date that he would try to "keep his excitement at a modest, manageable level." i don't even know why i still think about him, really. i have a tendency to mimic the way people text/talk to me, and as sue said, it was exhausting thinking so hard to craft a message that mimicked his writing style instead of just talking the way i normally do. he's probably in cincinnati now, i guess.
-matt's old messages from when he had an iphone. most notably, i was able to reread the messages that we sent to each other when he left me at the airport. i was cruel, but not as cruel as i thought i had been in my mind. there were also lots of regular, boring-type relationship messages. "can you bring home wine? did you feed the dogs before you left? love youuuu." related: i deleted 400 photos off of my phone this week, including every picture with matt. it didn't feel sad. just... cleaner.
-there were a lot of screenshots from my tinder messages where people were assholes. i need to stop doing this. it just makes me hold onto unnecessary anger.
it's nice that all of those things are gone, i think. i am really good at throwing things out, physically, but not so much when it comes to messages. i like to reread, reread, reread.
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i am tired of trying to force connections with people for whom i feel nothing.
the fun in having sex with people and staying over with people is not actually the sex itself, for me, (like okay it's fun but that's not the point i'm making) but instead the before and the after.
before: feeling the anticipation of someone who is going to touch you, not knowing exactly how it's going to go, being coy (or actually being very forthright), being cute, really.
after: feeling like i have a right to talk and ask questions and learn things about this person, make connections, cuddle, touch. lots of touch, actually.
i want to feel a connection, feel the anticipation, then act on it. and then stay up all night and talk to each other and learn things. and so that's what i'm going to try to do. we'll see how it goes. and maybe they'll send me messages that i can reread, reread, reread.