text messages

I've finally done something I've been meaning to for a long time; I can strike through one little task on my woefully long to-do list.

I've finished backing up all the texts on my old phone.

I probably should expand a little more on this, so that nobody reading this will scratch their head over why this is supposedly a significant task for me.

I'm currently wielding an iPhone 3G, a third-hand device that passed through the possession of my father and then my mother before landing in my grubby little claws. But before this, I used a Sony Ericsson W810i. It's a swanky white model, small and easy to use, and even though I've retired it for almost two years now, it's still dear to me. I used it from when I moved to Australia up until I graduated from high school.

It was and is precious to me. I'd load it up with songs, and hide away at school, relying on it to entertain me when I had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Whenever I was in an awkward situation, I'd pull it out and pretend to be busy texting somebody. Due to my incessant international texting, I used to rack up impressive phone bills that led to a lot of lecturing from my mother.

It was on this phone that I sent and received an array of messages to and from Vern. These were texts that I had stored in there all these years. All others unrelated, I've already deleted long ago. But his still remain, and all others related to him.

And I've been meaning to back them up to my laptop, to provide a safe archive for me to save and trawl through one day, in case this phone ever dies. That was one fear I had inside of me. What if I lost all those texts? Two weeks of short, constrained messages full of short-hands and slang and misspellings. What if I lost them? I couldn't let that happen. So I scribbled down on my to-do list: "Backup smses on old phone."

And I delayed. For various reasons (no time! can't find my old phone right now! where did that transfer cable go? i don't know what program to use!), I stalled.

A part of me was too afraid to tuck away my iPhone, grab my old phone and switch it on, flick through the inbox, and read through the past treasures stored in there.

I used to do that a lot. After Vern passed away, for the many months that followed, I read and reread all that we wrote to each other. It was easy. I was still using that white phone during then, and so I had constant access to those messages at any time I wanted. And it both beautified and haunted my day, reading those glorious memories again and again, when I felt sad or happy or lonely or content.

When I traded that phone for the iPhone, about half a year after Vern's death, that changed. The white phone became Pandora's box. Once I open it, I'd unleash a torrent of poisonous feelings - not into the world, but into myself.

Since it was no longer my main phone of usage, it was easy to ignore it. Accessing the messages no longer held the factor of convenience. I tucked it away in a drawer, safely and snugly, promising myself to Back Up My Shit one day. One day.

One day turned into a few months, which spiraled into almost two years, and here I am.

I found a program, I set up all the drivers, and I plugged in my phone. For a split second, I was worried that it wouldn't start up. That age and disuse might've led to its death, and the screen would remain black, and those messages would be lost forever. But the screen blinked, and my paranoia faded.

I archived them in my laptop. The originals still remain on the phone, but now there's a copy existing in my laptop. I can't explain just how relieved I feel. Not only have I crossed this off my list and shook off the burden of thought, I know have some sort of safety vault for these short memories.

I think I must sound a bit stupid. I can't really explain how this is significant or important to me, I guess. But it is.

Actually, the backing up process had a slight hitch in it. It's a bit convoluted to explain, but well, I discovered that one of the messages he had sent me was missing. The very first message he had sent me, in fact, which makes it doubly important and darling.

You see, because I was and am a clumsy idiot, I had somehow saved that very first message to the sim card, and my phone being the bizarre little creation it is, no longer kept a copy of it on the phone. It only existed on the sim card.

But when I got my iPhone, I had swapped sim cards.

And so I panicked. Well, one part of me panicked, the other filled with quiet, hopeless dread and acceptance.

"It's only one text," the latter part tried to assuage my frantic half.

But one text is more than enough. I had to somehow get it back - but did I even have the sim card any more? I couldn't remember throwing it away, but then, it's just a sim card. Who the hell remembers whether they've thrown away their old sim card or not? And my room is a disorganized jungle of old cables and piles of paper; how would I ever find it again?

So I settled, and preemptively gave up. There was little point in searching for a lost cause. And after all, it was only one text. Only one.

But you know what was the worst feeling at that moment?

It was that I couldn't remember what that text was. I couldn't remember what it said. It was the very first message he had sent me, and I couldn't remember a word of it. What was it about? I felt miserable as I realized this. I could recall a few of the other texts he had sent me, some of the more clever and cute ones he had written to me.

But this one, the very first one he sent to me, the one that started our ongoing conversations - it was blank in my mind. The chunk of my brain that stored it no longer functioned, or at least it refused to disclose any information.

It might've been really important. Or really cute. Or really sweet. I couldn't remember. And I needed to remember. I didn't want to lose it. I needed to recapture it and reenter it into my brain.

I had to find it.

So some sort of hopeless determination funneled its way into my heart, and I began to look for the sim card. I dug through my room, rummaged through every box of cables and technological doodad that I possessed, emptied every drawer and rifled through every bag. And I couldn't find it.

It was gone.

That one piece of memory of him was gone. Forever, because I had been too stupid and too slow in backing it up.

Some quiet sort of misery simmered in me. I hadn't been expecting to find it, so I wasn't exactly outraged, but having it confirmed that I'd never get back that one text was a blow to the heart.

So I sat down amidst the mess I had created in my room from my scavenger hunt.

And then I saw it. It was in a drawer I had pulled open, hidden within a mass of cables. But it stood out, white among black, and I could see the yellow emblem on it that declared it to be an Optus sim card, my old sim card. For a second, I wondered at how I could've missed it in my earlier search. But then I didn't care. I had found it! I had it again. It was mine, that one piece of memory was mine again.

So I slid it into my phone and started it up. I wanted to see what he had written. What was the first message he had ever sent me?

My phone screen flickered to life, and after a few seconds of loading, I navigated my way to the saved messages inbox. And there it was.

Vern
"Yuan yuan ?"

And then I remembered it. I remembered reading that text. I remembered receiving it late at night, hearing my phone sound its little ditty indicating that I had a new message, and wondering who on earth would be texting me. And then I saw that message, and even though I didn't have his number then and so the sender's number was meaningless to me, I knew it was him. He called me that, a petname formed from my Chinese name, one that I adored. Not many people call me that, only my parents do. For some reason he also did, and it was sweet.

And then I switched over to the sent messages outbox to see what I had replied to that. I was very eloquent.

"OMG! Vern! <3"

That's Pulitzer Prize-winning shit right there.

It didn't properly convey my glee though. I was bubbling over with a very loud type of pride and joy, and all I could manage was an "OMG" and a heart. But still, I think in the later messages I sent him, I expressed my happiness a little bit better.

---

Reading through the messages he sent me, all of them, I get a little teary-eyed. He was splendid. Within the confines of 160 characters, he was adorable and sweet. With a near blasphemous amount of exclamation marks, smileys, and spelling errors, he was amazing.

Re-reading the messages and reliving the memories attached to them, it's very clear to me that I've lost someone incredible by every measure.

I don't think I could ever again meet someone as perfect as him again.

He was a deeply flawed creature. But he was perfect for me. He was perfect for the time, for my age, for my situation, for myself. I needed someone sweet and brilliant and strange, and I got him.

---

Three things about his messages that I want to make especial mention of:

1) His overuse of smileys of every kind was very adorable and very effecting.
2) He had an array of petnames for me, from Yuan Yuan to "silly =P", from Meatball (a stupid play on my Chinese name that I didn't really like when others said it, but didn't mind when it was him using it because it sounded oddly cute from him) to "my favorite girl."
3) The generous amount of hugs he'd unleash on me through text. I think this is my favorite thing about these texts. It's as if every other one of them had the word typed out at least once.

Though every single one of these messages are precious to me (I sound like a parent), there's one in particular I cherish and love above all others (a very bad parent).

There's a bit of backstory and context to this one text. But there's no way that I can retell it without having it lose a lot of its meaning and potency. So I won't share the context, because once it loses just a little of its essence, it falls utterly flat. But just know that it was a highlight for me, a secret success that I prided myself on, and his response to it was one that injected lethal amounts of light-headed glee into me.

His response, my favorite text message above all others, with all its juvenile text-speak conventions and irrevocably sweet loveliness:

Vern
28/05/2009 11:53AM
!! Omgg !! I wanna hug u so bad now D= look who's the sweet one noww~ miss u miss u misss youuuu ! Hughughug*