An app I don’t really use that much on my phone is the “Notes” app. I’ve always been more inclined to write down my thoughts in notebooks or journals, so after years of having an iPhone I have maybe used the app a handful of times. When I first started dating my most recent boyfriend, we were at the beginning stage of the relationship where we were figuring out all the things the other person had not done or tried that we would need to do together as a couple. That could be restaurants to try, movies to watch, places to go, date ideas, etc. Our list had things like going to the drive-in movie theater, eating hot dogs at a baseball game, and ax-throwing. It was an exciting time, a literal list of possibilities for all the things we would do together.
If we were unsure of what to do that next weekend together, pull up the list! As the months went by we added to the list as we came up with new ideas and checked off the items we had conquered. Looking through the list was an instant camera roll for my memory, marking all the key events and passage of time that we endured together.
And then the relationship ended. And it was really sad. I was sad. I made it through the first day, the first week, the first month. I knew it would take time and there weren’t any shortcuts through the pain. Our list on the Notes app stayed frozen in time and forgotten about.
Until my best friend shared her list of things to do for our summer trip together. As soon as it was shared, it brought me right back to the list with him. I read through it and felt all the feelings again. I remembered the ax-throwing we did and saw that we never made it to the drive-in. I remembered at the cute restaurant on the island I had always wanted to try and saw that we never made it to the baseball game. I read through the list again of all the things we had done, and not done, together. It was hard to see all the plans that we had made together that would never come to be. Unfinished.
I read through that list the next few weeks almost as a ritual. We never did that, we won’t do that, we’ll never see that. Pretty torturous. I wasn’t expecting my grief to be reignited from a bulleted shared list on an app. I considered deleting it but couldn’t bring myself to do it, but reading through it as I was doing was clearly not helping me either.
So I promised myself I wouldn’t go back on and read it. I would give it some more space. I could decide later if I wanted to delete it. And as the days went by I forgot to remind myself to not look at it and honestly just forgot about it. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered it again, and I went ahead and opened it up. And instead of focusing on all the things that were left undone, I looked through all the things we had done together when things were good and we were happy. I wondered if I would give all of that back, all of those good times, just to avoid being sad when things came to an end. And I knew I wouldn’t choose that.
I would do it all over again. I would throw the ax, watch the movies, eat the food, decorate the Christmas tree. I would do it all again because for a season of my life I loved him, and that list brought me joy and gave me hope for our relationship that I wanted to last longer than it did. And maybe one day I’ll delete the list, but maybe I won’t. Maybe I get to decide down the road what I’ll do with it.
Until then, I’m making new lists. Sharing them with other people. There’s just so much to do. Or not.
