What if We Recorded Every Word We Ever Said?

What would it be like if she had kept every word they ever said to each other?

Imagine that.

Imagine a record of all they had said, every single word.

As it was, the relationship had gone on for over three years.

And now was today, and it was Day Twelve Hundred and Something, she guessed, if she was numbering them from Day One.

And when she looked back to this thing called The Past, to fish around for details, things were hazy there. She couldn’t help herself sliding into a feeling of disappointment.

Certain images weaved around in her mind, highlights – the time their trolley tipped over at the supermarket and the milk went everywhere and he couldn’t stop laughing, not at her, but with her; a holiday in Barbados when they were walking along the beach and she felt that yes, life was essentially beautiful, and despite the problems it would throw at her, life would always be worth living, after all; and making sweetly slow and tender love on her birthday, with candles, with the sheets scented – certain pictures stood out from certain moments, but as for the finer details of everything… ah, that was the problem.

She wanted facts, something sharper to cling on to, the meat as it were, the proof of where their relationship had been, the proof of what it really was, and where it was going to.

But she felt that looking back into memory was like putting her hand out into the air and trying to grasp the air itself, and her fingers were falling forward and empty with the futility of it.

But what if they had done things differently. What if they had recorded all their meetings from day one?

What if they had used their smartphones to record videos of themselves,  each and every meeting, including all those times that did not readily come to mind – the everyday times, talking on the park bench, talking over breakfast, talking in the car – everything – and had stored all of these onto their computers?

And what if she had a transcript from these videos of all the words spoken between them, every single word, and she had them as a huge text file on her mobile phone, so she had over three years’ worth of conversation she could always access in the blink of an eye?

How would that feel?

Would that give her what she wanted? Would that feel the complete opposite of trying to grasp thin air itself? Would that feel beautifully solid, and reassuring to her, to feel that no matter where she went, she could carry the complete relationship around in her pocket?

Maybe that was the answer she was looking for. When she was away from him on business trips, she would feel reassured to know her smartphone had it all.

Every word between them. Every word that otherwise would be forgotten would be locked into the glass and silicon.

She felt like it could be like a lifeline, a lifebelt.

It would let her know exactly where she stood with him and stop any guesswork. In her mind she pictured herself standing on the deck of a steel ship of certainty, an ocean liner ploughing through a fog bank of doubt, and making it through victoriously, the edges of her red dress flapping about freely in the breeze as she looked up at a beautiful and clear blue sky.

And then she pictured herself on business in a distant hotel room, in Venice, or Paris, at the end of the day when her work was done and her briefcase would be on the floor and her business suit would be neatly tucked away in the closet and she would be lying in her bed with her smartphone beside her on the pillow.

And she could look at it and think, ‘I have you in here. I have us in here. Everything we ever said, everything we ever did. Thousands and thousands of pages of it, millions of words. All that life force, all that wanting and desire, all that love and romance – I have it all. The vagaries of memory will otherwise steal our relationship away from me. But now it is locked in here, for me. This has made my smartphone my greatest and most prized possession.’

But it would also hold all the arguments. The disagreements.

And whilst she had a record of millions of words, did he mean everything he had said in those words? It would still carry the doubt that he was not always telling her the truth – yes, what was the reality behind the words – that was still the problem.

That was still a difficulty to think about.