I decided the breakup needed to happen on January 1, the morning of the new year. I knew it would not be pretty, that there would doubt brought on by longing and missing, especially the first few hours, then the first few days, but I had to do it. This relationship had become toxic. 

I’d broken up before, but I had not done it well, had eventually allowed all the good times to lull me back, until I was exactly where I started. I didn’t like who I had become in this relationship—distracted, controlled, consumed. I had no one to blame but myself and the truth was glaring at me: my cell phone and I were in a love/hate relationship, but the hate was becoming stronger than the love.

I wrote about this on my blog last May, how my cell phone and I needed to see other people. The social media apps were off my phone, except for nasty little Instagram which conspired with my phone to keep us together. Turns out the social media apps were only part of the problem. There were plenty of things left to make me want to check the cell phone, and this was a constant, nagging feeling—when I was standing in the grocery checkout line, when I was trying to write a story, when a commercial came on or when there was any sort of lull in my day. I felt compelled to check the phone, to scroll through my email and message apps to see if something had come in, and then if there was still in a lull, I would check the news apps, and then, and then … it was an endless loop.

This really began when my phone became “smart.” It learned how to make me more reliant on it by offering to make my life “simpler,” having one place for everything, and I bought into it, using the notes feature where I kept my grocery list; the alarms feature for my dog’s twice-daily medications; the app where I could check my gazillion email accounts. I could call up anyone, anytime, and I could be reached at all moments because otherwise the world might end. And without my phone, how would I instantaneously answer the random questions that popped into my head? “What’s the temperature outside?,” “How many miles is it from here to there?,” and “Who was that actor again in that one film? Wait, what film was that? Wasn’t that English actress in it, too? What’s her name? What was that other film she was in?”

And after finding out that MUST-HAVE-NOW information, I would then check my email again, and my texts, and look at how many steps I had walked for that day, and on and on. 

My cell phone also understood how to make my fears work in its favor. If I thought about taking a walk in my neighborhood without it, it would say, “What if you need me this time? What if you have an ACCIDENT? Don’t you want to be able to call for help? You can’t leave me at home, and you especially can’t turn me off. How will your husband know where you are if you get KIDNAPPED?” Fine, I would say, reluctantly. That phone went everywhere with me, plastered to my body, tracking my every movement. 

All of this is how I had gotten lost in the relationship. My brain felt hijacked, my attention span shortened, and I hated the addiction, hated how it made me feel. Was I grateful for my phone? Yes, but the cost was getting higher.

On January 1, this was my mantra: twenty-one days. Isn’t that how long it takes to break a habit? If I could make it twenty-one days, maybe I could really kick this addiction, finally.

What would be different this time? Determination. I needed the phone to be off as much as possible. Before, I had given in to a compromise by keeping it on but in my purse. That was my mistake. I still would be in the middle of writing and I would walk over to my purse to check the phone. For what? Calls! Email! Someone (Gayle King!) might have texted!

If my cell phone was off, I wouldn’t walk over to check it. This time, I kept it off as long as I could in the morning. Once I turned it on, I would check it once then turn it back off until later in the morning or noon, then turn it off again, etc.

My screen time went down more than 50% the first week. It went lower the next week. Did I have any relapses? Yes, for a few days while I was actually waiting for an important email to come in. But once it had, I stopped the nonsense. Twenty-one days came and went, and now it’s been over a month, and I can tell you this: it’s working. My brain is resetting. I no longer feel that constant pull to check the phone. I like having it off for long stretches. Do I ever have that impulse to check it? Yes (especially in the grocery checkout line!) but less frequently. I notice the change most when I am writing: my attention span seems to be lengthening back out. I notice it when I am with people and not feeling any distracting tug. I feel more present.

Case in point: the other day I was out hiking and I took the phone with me but I kept it off and only turned it on once to snap a photo, and only for a minute. While it was on, I didn’t feel the need to check anything, so I didn’t.

My cell phone is not happy that my landline and I are having a renewed interest in each other. I know my cell phone and I aren’t truly broken up, that we will likely always be together, but I hope our relationship can withstand this space for the long haul because I need it. I am happy with this freedom. I feel more like myself than I have in a long time.

Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash