Every July 21, my Instagram memories remind me of the first time my nephew Gavin and I truly bonded.
Our Gavin, a pandemic baby, was a shy little boy, the kind who needed time and gentle patience. To this day, he takes a little longer to warm up to anyone. But during this one short family trip, I finally got him to sit next to me for a couple of funny pictures. I remember thinking I had to move quickly, he might run off any second. I didn’t expect him to stay, but he did.
That was four years ago.
Now, his mother rings me every time Gavin wants to hear another one of my crazy bedtime stories about a young superhero named ‘Gavin,’ of course, who has an elephant and a lion for sidekicks.
He still doesn’t like crowds. Still hides behind his nanay and tatay when strangers come. But with me, he listens. With me, he laughs.
Every year, when that blurry photo resurfaces on my phone, grainy, two faces squished together in a rare moment of stillness. It reminds me of how relationships bloom quietly. Not with fanfare, but with presence. My phone remembers the exact date even when I forget.
Sometimes, I think my devices know more than I do. Or at least, they know what to return to me when I’m too busy and tired, or too far from who I was when I took the picture.
But not all my memories live in the camera roll. Some live in playlists.
I was in college when one of my closest friends made me a Spotify playlist. I don’t remember how the idea came up, but I remember the concept. She knew I was obsessed with My Hero Academia, particularly Aizawa, the perpetually exhausted teacher who graded papers with bloodshot eyes and held more heart than he let on.
So, she curated a playlist just for me. The theme? Me and Aizawa pulling an all-nighter together. I brew us coffee in the middle of the night. He sits across from me, hunched over a pile of student essays. I read a book under warm lamplight.
The songs she chose were mostly soft tunes, hushed and intimate. The kind of tracks you’d play when the world’s asleep and you’re trying not to feel too much.
And here’s the thing, whenever I hit play on that playlist, even now, I’m transported back to those late nights.
Not with Aizawa, sadly. But to the real version: me, hunched over my own laptop, sleep-deprived and slightly panicking, trying to finish off a chapter or a section of my thesis. Memorizing cases for media law. Highlighting too many things. Breathing in caffeine. Crying a little, then pulling myself together to write one more paragraph.
I’ve never removed it from my library. It’s there, nestled between study tracks and alternative rock anthems, a tiny digital gift wrapped in friendship and fandom.
I see it, and I feel seen, by the person I was and by someone who once took the time to map my imagination in music.
That’s the strange thing about tech. It remembers everything, even the versions of us we thought were just passing phases. It doesn’t laugh at the silly stuff. It doesn’t question the sincerity of your anime crushes. It just keeps them quietly.
There are other kinds of keepsakes, too. The more awkward ones.
My phone has some of my Zoom recordings. Interviews I conducted in pajamas, blazers, or both. Founders, CEOs, product leads. The kinds of names that once made me triple-check my microphone before letting them in the room.
Some of those videos I rewatched a dozen times, just to transcribe a good quote. Others I couldn’t even finish. I hated hearing my voice. I couldn’t stand the way I said “cool” three times in a row, or when I was obviously confused which preposition to use: in, on, or at.
There were moments I’d forget to mute and nervously laugh too loudly. A few times, I’d freeze mid-question, overthinking how to phrase something simple.
But then there’s this one interview I’ll never forget. I had just asked something, not brilliant, not rehearsed. Just honest. Something I was curious about, even if it felt slightly off-track.
The CEO paused. Looked at me through the screen. And said, “That’s a really good question.”
As soon as I ended the call, I rushed to my parents’ room and told them I got complimented that day.
I’m glad I kept the clip. I saved it even though I’ll probably never post it. Because in that frame is a version of me I’m proud of. That girl asked questions even when her voice shook. She didn’t know if she belonged in the room, but stayed anyway.
But awkward keepsakes don’t end there. Messenger has its own way of dragging out ghosts.
There’s that shortcut bubble—you know that one. The one that floats on your screen with the people you talk to most often. The app means well, it thinks it’s helping. But it doesn’t know how to take a hint.
Which would be fine, if I still talked to that person.
But Facebook, for all its data and tracking and creepily accurate ad targeting, takes forever to figure out you’ve stopped talking to someone. For months, sometimes even a year, their face just hovers there like a digital haunting. “Want to message them again?” No. I don’t.
What I want to say to Zuckerberg is simple: Do better. Please.
Make the shortcut disappear when the conversation dies. Give us a button that says: “The connection expired.”
Because there’s a specific kind of ache in seeing someone’s name still served up to you, as if tech doesn’t recognize silence as closure.
And then there are the messages I never deleted.
In 2023, during my last year in college, I made a mistake in one of my articles for our student publication. I don’t remember what the error was, just that it felt big and public.
I was sure I’d disappointed the team. Then, my publication adviser-slash-mentor messaged me on Viber:
“Dawn, in a few months, ga-graduate ka na. Hindi na kita mase-sermonan o masusungitan when you fail. Kailangan mong pagbutihan because I know you belong in the industry.”
That message lives somewhere in a thread filled with stickers and meeting reminders. Never took a screenshot, but I did copy-paste it and shared it to my close friends circle on Instagram.
Honestly, I’ve gone back to it more times than I can count.
Because now, as someone who did enter the industry, and who still fails sometimes, I hold onto those words like a lighthouse. My phone kept them for me for the moments I don’t feel like that girl he believed in.
There are more fragments. A list of dishes in my Notes app that reminds me of every merienda I had with the missionary team at church. A screen recording of a video call with my cousin and dad, laughing at something any of us no longer remembers.
Our devices are museums and graveyards all at once.
They hold evidence of the people we used to love and the versions of ourselves that we outgrew but never fully let go of.
And while we spend so much of our digital lives trying to clear space and close tabs, there are still files we never touch. Not because we need them, but because we’re not ready to let them go.
My phone doesn’t just know about the people I’ve lost. It knows how I loved, how I tried, how I healed. It knows who helped me along the way, even if just for a sweet second.
Maybe tech doesn’t let us forget, but maybe that’s a kind of mercy, too.
Mercy for the days when memory fails and I forget what I’ve already survived. I have proof.
In playlists. In screenshots. In shaky videos. In messages I wasn’t ready for then, but treasure now. Proof that I was here, and that they were, too.