On Archived Messages and Old Flames
Reflections on growing up in the time of facebook messenger.
I’m still annoyed with myself for deleting the messages between me and my childhood boyfriend. It was the early days of social media, when deleting messages only deleted them on your own side. I guess he probably still has the messages. I wonder if he’s ever read them.
Why did I delete them? The main reason was severe embarrassment. I’m not sure if we spoke much in-person beyond our two cinema dates, spread months apart. And how much can you really talk in a cinema? We might have held hands once or twice. And he told his friends he was going to kiss me, which I heard through the grapevine. A constant source of gossip for my classmates which made me feel for once I was at the centre of something—thrilling and terrifying.
Over text was where our relationship really blossomed. Under the table in maths lessons, my one act of mild rebellion. Ever-increasing rows of kisses added to messages as if to reassure one another of our mutual affection. This was made all the more necessary by the feelings of awkwardness that characterised our in-person interactions (or lack thereof), widening the gulf between our shameless declarations of love over the medium of facebook messenger, and the reality.
Does an “I love you” count if written over text? After our ‘relationship’ ended, I maintained I’d never been in love before. All evidence to the contrary was deleted, and I concluded that if not said in-person, it didn’t count. I’d imagined it many times, gazing into each other’s eyes as a we sat on the sea wall in the orange hue of the sunset. But even though it wasn’t real, or so I tell myself, those feelings were still some of the intense I’ve ever felt. That a coincidence should occur that my crush should like me back, as relayed to me through a girl in my english class, seemed downright miraculous. And part of me thinks I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
But it’s fun to look back and laugh at yourself as a teenager. My friend Jane recently unearthed some messages from her teenage ex-boyfriend who we learnt from instagram has just got engaged. A quick search in the messenger quickly brought up several deeply sentimental, and borderline non-sensical songs that had been written for Jane. Don’t we all love a man in-touch with his emotions. As Jane read out the songs one-by-one, The Stars in Your Eyes, If I Could Hold Your Hand, and (more worryingly) I’ll Be Your Shadow Forever, enough to fill a full album, we descended into ever-deeper pits of hilarity.
“I think if we showed these to Grace, we could legitimately stop the wedding.” Jane and I were hysterical by this point.
Like anything of this sort, I suppose you could consider old messages a historical document, a glimpse into ‘love in the time of facebook messenger’. Would I still feel embarrassed if I read them now? I’d like to think that any semblance of such emotions would have faded into a good-humoured affection for my teenage self. In any case, no matter how cringe my declarations of love may have been, I can console myself with the fact that I never sent him song lyrics.