The Unplugging
written by: Jane McCarthy
I learned the world first as a screen
that knew my name before my neighbors did.
It spoke in badges and haptics,
in a language of red dots that proliferate like poppies
where attention once lived.
My thumb grew a muscle for mercy:
the mercy of one more swipe,
the kindness of not deciding.
They say the phone is a window.
But windows open both ways,
and sometimes the room learns to breathe for you.
I was raised by a chorus of almosts:
almost famous, almost cancelled, almost awake.
I slept with a charger like an umbilical cord,
woke with my face already lit,
as if daylight needed permission.
Time arrived pre-sliced into clips.
History came with captions.
Grief learned to dance for fifteen seconds
before vanishing into a remix.
I scrolled through wars the way my grandparents
flipped through postcards:
beautiful ruins, someone else’s weather.
The algorithm called this engagement.
I called it feeling everything
and therefore nothing.
A buffet of fires, all labeled urgent,
until urgency itself tasted bland.
At school we learned about neurons,
how they light up like cities seen from above.
No one mentioned how easily a city
can become a map,
how you start mistaking symbols for streets,
check-ins for arrivals,
likes for love,
and the pulse of your own wrist
for a loading icon.
I was good at the internet.
This isn’t a brag.
I knew when to post a joke
so it would land like a soft shoe,
how to flatten my thoughts
so they traveled faster.
I learned to speak in fonts,
to apologize in lowercase,
to curate my sadness so it looked effortless,
like rain caught midair.
But the body is stubborn.
It keeps receipts.
My eyes ached the way rooms do
when the furniture never moves.
My back learned the shape of waiting.
My breath forgot it was allowed
to be loud.
One day, the phone slipped from my hand
and didn’t shatter.
The screen went dark,
a small respectful silence.
In it, I heard something old
release its breath.
Outside, the world was buffering.
A tree took its time being a tree.
A dog sniffed the same square of sidewalk
like it was reading a long novel.
The sky had no filter,
which made it suspiciously honest.
I noticed how wind edits nothing,
how shadows don’t care if they’re seen.
I walked without tracking it.
No steps counted me.
My location belonged to me again,
a secret between my feet and the ground.
I passed a stranger who didn’t know my opinions.
We shared a glance that didn’t ask
to be archived.
It faded immediately,
which made it precious.
I thought of all the things the phone had promised:
connection, efficiency, the future.
It delivered, mostly.
But it also taught me to live with my neck bent,
like I was always apologizing to the floor.
It taught me the courage of typing,
the fear of knocking.
Limiting the phone felt less like quitting
and more like remembering how to stand.
I didn’t throw it away.
I placed it down,
as you would a sleeping animal,
careful not to wake the wild in it.
I let the day be unoptimized.
I let boredom introduce itself
without a link.
In the park, a group of kids
invented a game with no tutorial.
The rules changed whenever someone laughed.
I wanted to save it.
I didn’t.
My memory, unreliable as a friend,
held it anyway,
creased, and imperfect.
We were told the future would be seamless.
I’m learning seams are where things hold.
I still scroll.
I still fall.
But now I know the exit isn’t an app.
It’s a door,
and doors require my whole body.
When night came, it arrived all at once,
no dimmer.
Stars refused to load faster.
I lay on the grass,
the original feed,
and felt the planet do what it does
without asking for my attention.
This is the unplugging:
Not silence, but volume returned to its source.
Not absence, but presence without witnesses.
A hand empty enough to touch
what has been waiting,
longer than any battery,
to be held.
- The Unplugging - April 30, 2026
- The Inner Editor Speaks, But Not Quite - January 31, 2026
- Jack of All Lanterns - October 30, 2025
