You know how whenever you look at your phone you always find a text from somebody, or en email. Or even just a message from your network provider. There is always something.
The other night, though, I checked my phone, and there was nothing.
‘Why isn’t anybody texting me?’, – I casually asked my daughter. More of a rhetorical question, of course. What could she possibly say?
‘Because nobody loves you’, – she told me with a straight face.
The wisdom of a 3 year old! She made me laugh and almost cry at the same time. At that instant I thought to myself: ‘I love my life and I love this little girl’. Although I do hope her smarty pants comments aren’t so deep next time.
And just like that… If you haven’t watched it yet, do so. Especially if you are no longer in your 20s. More so, if you used to be a big fan of Sex and the city. Watch it if you had lost the man you loved. Or simply because you have nothing better to do on a Thursday night.
This being a Monday night, I do have a story of my own to tell you.
And just like that, Costa Rica escaped me again. Because of…
This.
It took me a couple of days to reach Santa Ana in El Salvador. During those couple of days I had no internet connection, didn’t really need it. But once I settled with Mar and crashed, literally, on the bed in my room, I was eager to check my messages, especially the ones from Beno. What I found was an emoji.
I don’t know when we all first started using them. I do remember that years ago emojis didn’t exist. And so a few years back I was shyly putting this
or that
to the messages I wrote. Never this.
That emoji had a different meaning for me. Today many of us don’t hesitate to use it when talking to friends and liking their pictures. I am still cautious about using it, though. To me it signifies love. And I don’t give out love left and right. Years ago I didn’t expect others did, either.
And as far as I could remember that was the first time a guy had sent it to me. I don’t remember whether I told this to Beno, but here you have it. The emoji was the reason I went back.
‘Will you take me with open arms if I go back to you?’ – I asked him replying to his message, a.k.a emoji.
‘Yes, I will’, – he answered.
And just like that, I made an important decision in my life (one of the most important, I should add), based on an emoji. And no, I wouldn’t call myself reckless or irresponsible, flaky or lacking reason. I’d say that I made the decision that I wanted to make, and the emoji was just a sign I was making the right one.
Weeks later, when I asked Beno if he was happy when I told him I’d come back, he replied that saying I’d come back was easy. Any girl could say that. Showing up was different.
Show up I did. And I felt happier than ever when he met me with open arms.