Four young lads left their phones in my car because the heavens opened when I dropped them off at football training. I curled my knees up on the steering wheel and opened my book. Soon, I was demented by four almost constantly buzzing phones.
I read once that the body releases the same stress-related chemical, cortisol, in response to an unwanted message as it does to a physical threat like an attack by a wild animal. Ah, lads, I told them when they got back in the car, that’s terrible, it’s too much for your brains.
I fought against my parents’ demand that I get a mobile phone when I was 16. If I wanted freedom to make the most of life in Hanoi, the phone would give them comfort. The first time they rang me when I was out with my friends, I realised that my freedom had been lost either way.
I managed phone-less back in Ireland until about the age of 19. We’d make arrangements in person, or on the landline, or by knowing each other’s lecture schedules, and waiting for them to spill out of class. If someone didn’t show up, which was rare, you’d leave after 15 or 20 minutes, which you’d know by looking at your watch or asking someone, even a stranger, no less, for the time.
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I surrendered eventually. I’d keep my hand buried in my bag when responding to a message, feeling self-conscious about taking this machine, which I suspected was radioactive, out in public. Messages were efficient, and I’d kick myself for accidentally going into a second message and eating away at my credit.
There would be a smattering of messages over a week, with only close friends or family messaging when necessary. Responses were not immediate. My sister-in-law used to sit down in the evening, get her glasses, and read through and respond to her messages, like proper correspondence.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s correspondence. I still have letters that my siblings sent me when I was in primary school in Ethiopia, and they were in college in Dublin. One of my favourites is from my brother, writing in a hungover state about the night before. I’d study the envelope, the stamp, and my name in their handwriting, pore over the stories. I missed them desperately, and the letters were like having part of them with me.
When it was my turn to go to boarding school in 1994, those expecting mail would go to the hall after lunch. I remember the rush of dopamine when the postmistress said my name, and the disappointment on the days that she didn’t. My father wrote every day describing the weather, the dinner, and any excursions, and signed off with all his love. My mother wrote less frequently but with more depth, in cards decorated with dried pressed flowers or silk.
The mail would come in bundles, two weeks’ worth at a time. I’d carefully tear at the edges of the thin envelopes and soak in their script. In a convent where we were allowed few belongings and afforded little privacy, having those letters in my bedside locker in a small metal bed in a dorm of nine was as personal as it could get.
Email was the most common way of communicating when I moved to Zambia in 2008. I’d head to an internet cafe every few days and hungrily log in to see if anyone had written to me. I’d spend the expensive hour reading, laughing, elated by the words people had sent, rushing to respond before the hour I had paid for was up.
In 2014, my sister-in-law sent me her old smartphone when we were living in Tanzania. Despite not wanting to have a mobile phone in the first place, I found my time in Dar es Salaam desperately lonely, and being able to contact my best friend Jess at home at any time was a saving grace. Still now, living minutes apart, we check in on each other several times a day by text, with, I estimate, a hundred thousand messages having been exchanged between us.
Now this precious way of communicating, by written word, comes out of a box in our pockets like gunfire. The problem for me is that I still crave transcribed contact with people, but because the phone is also an administration centre, my brain doesn’t know whether to release cortisol or dopamine when a message comes through. When I open the phone to a message about a jacket in lost and found, I see that Gemma is typing. Just don’t respond, Gemma. We all know it’s not Jimmy’s, spare us those few seconds of our lives.
A flash of certain names on the screen thrills me. A random text from a friend who I haven’t laid eyes on in 10 years, asking me if I think he should run for president, puts a big smile on my face. We dive into a flurry of playful back and forth. Other times, I’m looking at two blue ticks and considering, with a tinge of embarrassment, someone’s lengthy lack of response, or the blatant ignoring of a clear question, or the failure to acknowledge something that took a bit of thought. There is a silent roar from the pit of my stomach saying, I hate this jingling glass rectangle and how it toys with me. The value of personal, composed exchanges scatters like a bird flying into a propeller.
My husband, at the end of a long week, sighs wearily that he has a load of messages he has to respond to. It’s like correspondence, he says. Yes, I sigh sentimentally, it’s just like correspondence.
