Starting Over

So I'm in the midst of all my moving preparations, which includes changing my address and typing it into about a dozen different forms. And while I was doing this, it occurred to me how appealing it would be to completely disappear and start over.

I have kept the same cell phone number since college mostly out of laziness, but also because I always wanted people from my past to have the ability to reach me. But recently I asked myself how many of these people I really do want to ever have contact with again.

Months ago, my ex-boyfriend texted me out of nowhere after seven months of silence. I had deleted his phone number, so I didn't even recognize it at first, and then it hit me who it was. The text was absurdly casual: "Hey it's been a while, how are you doing?" and filled me with nothing but anger and annoyance.

Knowing him very well after our three years together, I knew with absolute certainty that the only reason he could be reaching out to me after all this time was he needed or wanted something from me, be it the clothing he had accidentally left behind in my apartment and I had already disposed of long ago, or a favor of some sort. Thus, my knee-jerk reaction was to text back, "Whatever it is that you want from me, the answer is no. Fuck you and leave me alone." (Pardon my french.)

But then I decided that would be the crazy, bitter, immature reaction. And I certainly wasn't any of those things. So I just deleted the message and ignored it. Let him wonder about whether I had gotten it, or I had changed my number, or if I simply didn't care anymore.

Then, after a string of inappropriate texts, I started contemplating the cell phone number change anew.

The thing is I think I cling to my old cell phone number like a security blanket. I've had the same number for over nine years now, and I'm very attached to it; it's the number I handed out to friends and boyfriends over the years.

And on top of that, it's this bizarre psychological thing where I subconsciously hope that all those guys who never called will suddenly spring out of the woodworks and explain where they've been all this time. Highly unlikely, I know, but I'm still holding out hope that any day now they'll come around and call like they said they would.

(Just to make it sound slightly less psychotic and superficial, I also worry that if I changed my number, the perfect agent or job might try to call me, and then they would be unable to get a hold of me, and then there go my dreams right out the window. The fact that they could still e-mail me doesn't appease me at all.)

Considering this isn't the healthiest fantasy to cling to, I should probably just get over myself and do the damn thing.