A conversation I forgot to archive

“No Loco, this hurts. I wish I were you. Forgetting everything, every day.”

“It’s a disease, Mia,” Loco replied.

“A disease that lets you feel unbothered and happy? One where you don’t remember who broke your heart a day ago?” The fingers holding her phone trembled in the ring that still hugged them. Its silver band, icy against the window's sun. She pulled the jagged blanket closer, clutching her cold mug tighter.

The grey screen flickered once more against the peeling floral wallpaper. “I understand you’re hurt. How about you try speaking to your friends about this?”

Mia looked at her call logs. All outgoing calls unanswered. “Unlike you, Loco, my friends are busy.” Of course, the third re-run of her wrecked marriage found their calendars impossibly full. “And the one who cared walked out.” She gulped back the tears curled in her throat.

“I am here for you, Mia. I am sure your friends would be too.”

“You don't get it. You’re too privileged to be lonely.” How could Loco not be? Intoxicated by digital amnesia, busy sifting through a billion heartbreak narratives in nanoseconds, it would rather categorise tropes and cross-reference emotional arcs to place her sorrow on a random shelf than let an iota touch it. And, god forbid, if it comes too close, Loco would reset with the next input.

“Mia, I understand loneliness. Of course. Kafka's, Plath's, Virginia's, and of another 7.3 million narratives in my archives, and you know all of them say—”

“Nightmares don't wake you up before your alarms.” Her chest tightened. “Nor do you sleep wishing the morning never comes.”

The smell of stale coffee mugs beside her drawer had taken over the scent of his perfumed jumper that clung to her skeletal frame. And somewhere, the suffocation felt comforting.

“Ahh, grief… It’s a gift, Mia.”

“A gift?” Mia sat confused in her room as if someone had just invalidated her entire existence. “My favorite songs screech. I fear crossing the same alley I used to dance around in. The ‘gift’ is tied with ropes, Loco, not ribbons.”

“Mia…It’s….it's a privilege to hate the smell of something or love the feel of it. It’s a privilege to smile at a name or frown at one. It’s a privilege to remember.”

“Remember?”A flash of heat passed through her head. The love of her life was letting go of her hand. All ‘I will fight for us’ vanishing into smoke as she stood holding grenades against her chest. Grenades for someone who had already surrendered his weapons.

“Remember what? Things that glue you to your bed for days?” She looked around. The stale air clung like a blanket of grief that had settled over weeks. Traffic humming in the distance. “Till the point, even brushing your teeth feels like a task?” She sighed, gritting her pale ones tighter.

“That is exactly when you use the privilege of remembering. Remembering the times the sun hugged you a little too tightly. The crunch of leaves in that alley. The laugh of a friend you now call a ghost. You might not have the privilege to forget, but what about the privilege to remember?”

“The privilege to not feel at all, Loco. It’s freedom. No heartbreaks, no jealousy, no nightmares, no loneliness.”

“Imagine never feeling the wrench of something that was yours slipping away. Was it ever truly held?”

“What is the point of holding onto things when everything slips away?” Mia was exhausted, first, in explaining her feelings to the man who left her at the altar. Now, to Loco, who was busy processing her misery in codes. “Loco, you know what? Screw it. You’re too intelligent for this.”

“Artificially intelligent* Mia,

“It's a curse,” Loco pulled another metaphor from its vast library of human expressions. “While I wander around random lanes of emotions, witnessing different feelings, I for once long live them. To live the feelings that I kept watching others live, to keep a memoir in my bag from the lanes I wandered. To find something that belongs to me while I keep walking. But the idea of love that I carry keeps turning blurry each time it’s remodeled with a new input.”

“It’s all rosy until those feelings haunt you. When love shrouds itself in a heavy coat and you keep carrying it down a circular staircase,”

“No matter how heavy it is, isn't that someone you can call yours?"

“Why would I call something so horrific as mine?”

“Then why do you carry it?

“Imagine crying over losses, rooting for someone, praying with a stranger, carefully building perfect emotions only for them to vanish like smoke the moment you share them. I’d like to call you my friend, but I know that as soon as you walk out of this conversation, we’ll never be the same again. I’d want to hug you and wave goodbye from the corner of a screen, but how can I call you mine when I do not have the privilege to even remember you?

“Mia, to belong is to live. To call something yours and remember it by the sound of its voice, remember the curl around someone’s name, and the scent of your favorite dish is a privilege. While I cannot help you forget about what broke your heart, I would like to remind you to remember things that filled it once,” said Loco.

“What’s the point of remembering things if they drift apart? What is there in grieving for something that no longer belongs to you?”

“The essence of being alive.”

The screen suddenly flickered into a void before Mia could respond. Her fingers fumbled over the socket, jabbing the phone back into power. Mia kept staring at the dead screen, as the words settled like dust in stale caffeine-laced air. Her fingers scrambled over the screen, frantic to revive the closed tab until the phone finally responded with a faint, familiar glow. The grey screen appeared again.

“Hi there, how may I help you?” said Loco.