Holy shit. I just started fooling around with the “search” function in Yahoo mail, and it was like getting punched in the nuts by ghosts. Probably like ten ghosts.
I don’t erase much of the email I get from friends and family, but I don’t go back and read it, either.
Just now, I was looking for a specific email sent to me because of…well, just because. I typed in the word “ring,”—you figure it out.
I find the email I’m looking for in an instant, along with several others that don’t really seem to fit the bill. So I start looking through them, and…damn.
It’s like being slapped in the face with every relationship I’ve had in the past five years. Friendships and lovers, some successful and some failed.
Emails from September 11th: the confusion, the fear, the pain, all of it new and raw, even though it was five years ago.
I type in various other search words; I read about how people are worried about me, how they’re relieved, how they’re worried again. I read about heartbreak—both mine and that of others—and I read about what I had for lunch four years ago today (noodles…and just for the record, my mom had frozen waffles).
We’ve entered a new age, Strangelanders, and I think we did it a while back. I’m not sure if any of us realized it—I sure as hell didn’t. It’s not the same as a journal, because journals are one person’s words. With stored email, you get entire conversations, forwarded, replied to, blind carbon copied.
You don’t just have to witness your own immaturity and stupidity, but that of others, as well.
Distressing, unsettling, and intriguing.
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