I hate my phone.

I think the hate started back in February. I'd been carrying the damn thing everywhere I went for months, cursing myself for my inability to risk missing a call from her. One night I accidentally left the phone in the basement when I went to bed.

The next morning I saw that I'd missed an incoming message.

I'd lugged that damn thing around for at least a month since the last text message, and now I had nothing to show for it but a stupid blinking red light.

Blink blink. Ha ha. Blink blink. You suck. Blink blink. You lose.

I sent off a response, apologizing for missing the message, then got nothing for another month. Though you can be sure that my phone never left my side again, I began to loathe it and what it stood for. It became a little silver monument to my aloneness, a testimony to my fears and failures.

There was a day, not too long ago, when I really thought my phone would ring. I'd asked for a favor. For a chance to say goodbye before she left again. I was sure that it wasn't too much to ask for. I was sure that she'd call.

When my phone finally rang, late in the afternoon, my heart leapt and my breathing stopped. I snatched my phone up and looked at the screen.

It was my cousin Mike.

I may never forgive him for calling me on that particular day, but I know that the phone is my true enemy.

These days my phone plays a different kind of game with me. These days it rings a lot. My friends call. My sisters call. I don't know if people are checking up on me or what. I did endure a pretty hard blow after all.

These days when my phone rings, my heart leaps, and my breathing stops, and I snatch up the phone, and I look at the screen.

TrainGirl calling from her new home.

My sister telling me about her new deck.

CoffeeDude calling from Rich O's.

MisunderstoodGirl calling me all drunk.

VigilanteGirl discussing plans for the night.

These days, when my phone rings, I don't get excited. These days, when my phone rings, it scares the shit out of me. Every time I move to look at that screen I know I'm not ready for what could be displayed there. I seriously doubt that I'll ever be ready.

My phone knows this too. It knows that every time it rings, I'll be afraid.

Afraid of what I'll hear, but mostly afraid of what I'll say.

And afraid that the progress I've made over the past couple of weeks, the good mood that inexplicably continues to permeate my being even as I write this entry, that it all will be shattered the instant I see her name on the screen and realize that I've just been fooling myself once again.

The point I wanted to make here is that when you call me the reason that I sound grouchy isn't because of you. It's because I'm irritated with my stupid phone playing this mind game with me and getting me all worked up over nothing.