Bodysnatchers

Sometimes I think about the past. 

When you’re truly fed up with someone, even the small, stupid ding of an iMessage can feel like a hand closing around your windpipe. The body reacts before the mind does: jaw tightening, stomach tightening, hands itching to do something irrational with your phone. In June 2024, I considered tossing mine into the river behind the university. That month was defined by conjunctivitis, a mild obsession with WikiLeaks, my first playthrough of Disco Elysium, and a slow, granular loathing for someone who made me feel like I had a Cronenberg-esque wound in the middle of my chest. I don't think he knows who Cronenberg is. Probably a good thing.

I used to walk by the bay at night. There was a sailing club fenced off with crooked wire; I’d try to climb it, half-daring myself to trespass. Sometimes I would just lay down in the grass and stare up at the sky. There were no stars—just the sick wash of suburban light pollution, the sodium-glow hum of a city-university-suburb that didn’t sleep but didn’t quite live, either. Radiohead in my earbuds. A vague desire to cry, often satisfied. I miss that ritual: flattering the engineering major traipsing through my phone, digging myself into a huge hole, getting glossy-eyed with acquaintances at the library.

Now I live somewhere else. There’s a man-made lake, one of those sad public ecosystems engineered by a city council. Ducks gather there, and residents from the nearby nursing home roll their walkers out to feed them. It feels artificial in the way grief can feel artificial—technically everything’s in place, but it doesn’t work. During one low week in 2024, I asked my dad for his old BlackBerry. I loaded it with MP3s (either Radiohead or Aphex Twin) and walked for hours. No apps, no notifications, no intimacy simulacra. Just movement. I told myself I’d stop walking when I was ready to fix things. If it were up to me, I’d never stop walking.

I still get that urge—what I call the "fixation." I adore my friends and family, but sometimes I wonder who I’d be without the chronic hum of digital anticipation. If I could strip the urgency from my limbs and just live. Take calls. Text back. Go to the movies, even. Show up at my favorite lesbians’ apartment, sit on the floor, let them feed me noodles (and london fog cake) and call me out gently. Be honest with him. Stop talking to older guys. Do your flashcards. It could be good, I think. But I also think I’ll never do it. Not properly.

Last September, right before my birthday, I gave up and brought my iPhone back on my walks. I was trying no contact, but that resolve was made of tulle. I’d just reached the frozen yogurt place bordering the university parking lot when a message came through from D: Your birthday falls on Rosh Hashanah this year. A gray bubble. He was right. I thought, for a second, that maybe I could begin again.

He never sent a birthday message. Not even a reaction. Not even punctuation. My twentieth birthday passed in silence. I cut the velvet ribbon—figuratively, then literally—a few days later. I wished I’d never given him that chessboard. Custom marble. Heavy. Absurdly expensive. I just hope he didn’t throw it away. That son of a bitch was real.

My family and I went to a seafood restaurant the afternoon of my 20th. The wind tasted like brine. We shared hummus, warm flatbread. It was a good meal. I returned to that same restaurant a few weeks later, after everything happened with my mother. After the cat scratches. After the worst things were said, and totally not meant. My dad, my brother, and I ordered the chocolate nemesis and sat quietly, sweat still drying on my face. I remember the birds on the lawn outside the library. The long, humming fluorescents above me during the PSYC3318 final. The countryside sun—thin, unbothered—slanting through the window of the place I was staying. The monitor on the dining table. Watching Manhunter while eating grilled basa. The days I waited. And waited. Until waiting wasn’t the point anymore. Until I became something. Became someone. Became my body—not just a body.

I forget most of this, most days. When I’m answering emails or loading up the laundry or pretending to be legible in public. I forget that I exist beyond what I accomplish. That I live, whether or not I curate it well. In June 2025, I want to stop trying to make everything so pristine. That’s my real sin: I care more about how it looks on the tin than what’s fermenting inside. But I can stay tethered, or I can unhook myself. That’s the grace of it. That’s the choice.