melancholy

I’m Trapped in a Relationship with My iPhone

Artwork by Lonneke van der Palen via Sleek Magazine

“Hey, look up
Don’t make a shadow of yourself
Always shutting out the light
Caught in your own creation

Look up look up”

– Florence + the Machine

 

I think about a doodle Florence Welch made on the side of her poetry book, a smartphone with the screen showing a scribbly black hole. The lines are erratic, getting darker closer to the center, and anyone could look at it and say they’ve felt the same way inside their head. An arrow points at the phone, labeling it my personal sad machine.

I’ve always been a chronic texter, desperately seeking out any morsel of digital attention. What ever happened to eye contact, Erica? I want to have both a smart phone and a gentle relationship with the world. But most of what my phone is good for is leading me into an abyss. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re wasting someone’s time. There’s nothing better than having them seek you out. These are the choices presented to us in our phones—a left path and a right one—demanding pull our gazes downwards and wait to see where our screens lead.

Every text I send feels like a road flare. It scares me, being ignored.

It’s easy to fall back on the rush that comes with a high like-count or a notification from being tagged in a post. A centimeter wide heart is surely the smallest sign that people out there know I’m alive and care. But I cling to each one I get.

Waiting for a text that’s not coming is the first tug that pulls you into a downward spiral. Again, my phone is my personal sad machine. Whenever I want to be miserable, it’s right there, waiting. Phones relieve some types of loneliness. But, then again, the connectivity I barter for with this endless isolation cuts so much worse than not knowing what someone’s doing ever could.

I came late to the game with both Facebook and Instagram, but I’ve probably made up for the lost screen time by now. Still, I don’t have a pretty, color-coordinated Instagram. No one would say I’ve made a brand out of myself and my follower count is less than my younger sister’s.

A part of me wants to acknowledge the fact that if I lived a life without a phone once, I could do it again. But I’m not sure how to trade in my life for one I wouldn’t “need” a phone. I’m not sure if I had the chance I would take it.

I’m hardly the first to point out that we’ve formed unhealthy, often abusive relationships with the piece of us kept in our pockets. But when it comes to my phone, I know nothing about moderation. At the end of the song, Florence Welch sings, “I’m the same, I’m the same / I’m try’na change.” As I’ve gotten older, I’m only managed to get worse about checking my phone. I can’t claim much, but I can say that I’m always trying to change.

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Erica Macri is a 21-year-old writer studying English and Economics at Boston College. She is a New Jersey native who has always felt like she has one foot in New York. Erica has an affinity for redwood trees, window seats, and dogs of all sizes.

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