Today, I broke up with the blue phone for good. The blue phone and I have had six full years of tumultuous relationship. During this time, she hung up on me during conversations with other women, sent iffy text messages to wrong people, and even refused to book appointments at restaurants of my choice. But those are not among the main reasons for not wanting to have the blue phone around.

It was back in 2008 when I started getting familiar with the blue phone. In fact, I participated in making it. The blue phone has been practical, folksy, and functional. One of the very rare inanimate objects I’ve come to like. The blue phone knows more about me and my personal life than anyone else. It knows too much. It holds information that I’m ready to put into the category of memories.

There is significance around objects and things that become meaningful to us because of the way we use them and the meaning that we assign to them. The objects that populate an individual’s internal world are personal, specific and idiosyncratic in their meaning. I am not speaking here of having many toys, but of having relationships that encourage exploration, curiosity and play. Relationships that facilitate the exploration of the world, the self, and the self in relation. Such relationships create an environment that makes it possible to symbolize, memorize, and sentimentalize. The role of possessions in constructing a sense of past (via nostalgic memories) is inevitable. These objects are the stimuli for a chain of vivid memories. Memories that lead to other memories in an interwoven net grown rich in associations, moods, and thoughts.

It’s been awhile I’ve been thinking about throwing away the blue phone. But its retirement was triggered mainly because it received the most burning message from Taffy last Sunday. The blue phone suddenly ignited the bluest feelings in me -so much so that I found myself in cold sweat. I will miss the blue phone, but contrary to the common-sense, sometimes the greatest journey might be the distance between two entities -specially when one of them is blue.