If SIM cards could talk

It’s okay to say goodbye.

Do you remember that first text, 14 years and 8 phones ago, which we sent out of my sleek (now ancient) chassis of a home you used to call a Nokia 3210? Do you remember to whom you sent it to?

I do.

You sent a “hi,” to your mom who was just outside your room, because you only had 4 contacts at the time (including your brother, sister, and your Pop), and you were too excited to wait until Monday to get the numbers of your friends at school before you sent your “first.” See, would I choose to tell you I remember that, if I hated you for needing to replace me with a micro sim card for your new iPhone?

First moments

You would never coin what I receive and send as mere “Information.” That word is too broad and too alienating a term. I don’t convey just any kind of information. I deliver your “hahaha’s,” your “=), =p, =l,” your “I hate you’s,” your curses, your immaturity, and your “I love you’s.”

Do you know how when you first get the number of a girl you really like and you spend 45 minutes trying to compose the first ever text she would read from you? It’s because of the unwritten rule that the first text cannot be too long for the girl to think you’re overexcited and nervous, but not too short that she would not have anything to pull on if she wanted to reply.

From your first draft that was too uptight, to the second that seemed trying too hard, to the third that was written under the influence of beer and gin tonic, until you finally send it out, I am saving word every word each step of the way. The final product becomes the only proof of the first texting encounter. Unbeknownst to you, I remember the discarded drafts. Why? Because someone has to remember them even if you won’t.

Sometimes, when the day is over, you take me out of your iPhone and place me back inside one of your archaic Nokias, just so you could revisit that secret folder you entitled “Homework.” The messages are camouflaged in order to protect your darkest secrets but also your most memorable messages from the prying eyes of intruders. All of the messages are old and kept enshrined somewhere safe.

But because you made them valuable relics they have now become impossible for you to choose to remove them from their exhibition in the halls of my memory that carry your own. There is a text that reads: “thxs for being really sweet.=)” which you would read it over and over during high school. It made you feel celestial on one day and disconsolate the next. Now, you keep it because it makes you smile while serving as that unique door to a confused primordial past made tangible by my act of remembering. 

My identity

I am what my user chooses to make of me (consciously or unconsciously), and that begins when you start to share your life to create my own. You make me a part of you each time you receive a call from your nemesis, send an “I miss you” to the person who used to be your girlfriend, search the web for information on black holes and time travel, and, even when you simply allow your phone to sleep in your pocket while the arguments with your friends on the mundane and the exciting alike echo through.

I am your constant. I am the only surviving thing which you have taken with you and used everyday for almost half of your entire life. When we first met, you were this round 12 year old kid who was worried about not achieving his dream of becoming a lawyer because of his dyslexia and his overt shy character that made him fear an audience. You are 26 now, a former professor of literature, a lector who reads in church regularly in front of a large crowd of parishioners, and a law student who is about to take the Bar Examinations. I am not the same sim card and neither are you the same person we once were at the start of the Millennia (a fitting beginning don’t you think?) but what a journey we have faced together.

I thought, at the very least though, I would be there with you; listening, when you take your oath as an officer of the court and I would help spread the accomplishment to all your friends and family. But life, as you have shown me, derives its beauty from being unexpected. And that would be the story for my successor to carry, and what wondrous stories you and it will share.

You, my loyal companion, have given me meaning to exist. Without a message to store or a story to remember, I would have been a mere strip of plastic, nothing different than a grain of sand tossed on a lonely beach only to be engulfed by the uncaring waves of anonymity. And for that I could never be bitter about being replaced. And although there are many things that still must be said, my only regret is the fact that I, of all things, can never text you my—“thnk u.” – Rappler.com

Rafael Conejos graduated law school from DLSU Manila in 2014. He is also an entrepreneur who runs a small apartment hotel with his siblings.