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.
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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.
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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…
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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
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or that
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to the messages I wrote. Never this.
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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.