Somehow, the only application on my phone that truly represents me as a person is my notes app. Yes, the yellow rounded icon depicting a notepad. My initial stages of using the app as a mere 15-year-old were restricted to adding a range of passwords, a few quick websites that I could access quickly instead of incessantly surfing the web, and checklists. However, little did I know that the very next year, I would segue down a path of discovering my so-called “poetic” persona; and you guessed it, the poetries outweighed the passwords.
In all honesty, though, the notes app grasped my poetic rawness better than any diary entry could; there was an overtone of every increment of my thoughts and feelings at every given moment. I would type something down as soon as I got home from school, after my first real heartbreak, when I had a brief yearning stage and a whole lot of other introspective material. One theme that has been imperishable from my notes app is the poetry surrounding my perception of love, from ages 15 to 19, and of course, there’s always going to be the random fettuccine or butter chicken recipes tossed around here and there.
So here’s a modest breakdown of how the concept of love has changed for me, conveyed through my notes app (Emily Dickinson is rolling in her grave).
- Everything is poetically romanticised
-
One thing I have learnt about love inspired from every single entry in my notes app is that I have the power to turn even the most mundane object into poetry, and that is one primary definition of love for me. The grocery checklists serve as a scrap of memory tracing me back to a certain day, and the same goes for the list of passwords, assignment to-dos, and my beginner gym routine; these are increments that amalgamate me essentially.
- The muse for my poetry has always been random humans on the street
-
This might sound like a Barnum statement, but right from age 15, I have observed the quirks surrounding human nature, something that can be easily gathered from a sense of unpredictability that can only be seen out there: on the street, in the coffee shop, the bus ride home, at work, in my room, and a myriad of other places. Even though my notes app poetry is usually targeted toward how I feel about my heartbreak, or my love toward someone, the etymology of my musings has been humans or arbitrary acts that happen in everyday life.
- People you don’t/almost/completely fall in love stay with you (at least in your iCloud storage)
-
My perception of love has been constant in the sense that there is an increment of emotion in my notes app for every person I have been inclined to romantically; it could be in the form of poetry, or even subtle reminders such as ‘meet xyz at 7pm’, or ‘leave this situation’. The quasi-therapeutic nature of the notes app always draws me in for more comfort, like a holy gospel that is personalised just for me and my feelings.
- The one-liner life lessons saved as separate notes are all you need when your life comes crashing down
-
Every time I traipse down a spiral of existentialism at 2 am, the scattered one-liners embedded in my notes app serve as a reminder that everything will eventually be okay. I once heard a lady on the bus say to her daughter on the phone: “You’re not too much, and it’s okay to be too much if that’s what’s happening”- I live by this now. It’s also about random quotations I’ve read as graffiti, in restroom stalls, scraped pieces of paper, social media (“The world didn’t end when I was 17”), or even books; at the end of the day, this is love: the composition of everything you think can save you.
- At age 19, I know at the end of the day, no amount of heartbreak can change the conception of love for me
-
My notes app serves as a testament to this statement. It’s not only the vulnerable entries I’ve penned down when I was deeply touched by certain things, but also the random recipes, lists, and paragraphs that render themselves as elements of my thoughts. So eventually, this is what I have learnt about love: it’s not one single feeling, but rather, all the people I’ve turned into poetry.