We Are The Bridge

A love letter to my fellow 80's and 90's humans. A little extra piece in your inbox this week.

We are the bridge.
We’re the children of the 80s and 90s… the last to grow up without a dependency on technology, and the first to adapt to it. We are the generation who went from knocking on someone’s door to sending a text. From payphones on street corners to smartphones in our hands. We’re the ones who can still hear the sound of a dial-up tone in our dreams, who remember when “being unavailable” wasn’t a radical act, it was just life.

We grew up in a world where you could leave the house and not be reachable. Where holidays meant actually disappearing for a while, not checking emails from a different location. We are the generation who played until the streetlights came on, who went home when our names were called from verandas, who learned to make our own fun. Maybe that’s why we ache for simplicity now. Maybe that’s why so many of us are quietly nostalgic for a life that didn’t demand our attention every second of the day.

For me, the ache feels like Fiji. I can close my eyes and be back on the island with my family, spending holidays running wild and barefoot on those beautiful beaches. Climbing trees for fresh fruit, checking for stingrays as we chased each other along the back beach at low tide. Soccer ball under one arm. Salt drying on our skin. Cousins calling my name from somewhere in the distance. The ocean stretching endlessly before us like it held every secret we didn’t yet know how to ask.

I think about that little girl, the one who would jump off the top of concrete water tanks, who would roll down hills without fear of bruises or broken bones. The irony isn’t lost on me that the woman she became, this chronic illness girlie who hurt her back making a bed post-surgery, once hurled herself headfirst into adventure without a second thought.

Now my life looks different. People check on me because they’re worried, and rightly so. My phone stays close in case someone needs to call an ambulance. That access has saved me. It has made an incredible difference when minutes mattered. But still, the ache exists. The ache for a moment of peace, a stretch of time where I can disappear without explanation, where the world doesn’t expect me to be reachable at all times.

Lately, I’ve been going for walks in places with no signal, just to remember. To stand in the silence and let it fill the spaces technology has claimed. To breathe in air unbroken by notifications. In those moments, I feel like I’m touching the edges of the girl I used to be, the one who didn’t think twice about disappearing into the ocean, barefoot and sun-warmed, free.

This is my love letter to all of us who remember. Who straddle two worlds. Who carry an unspoken longing for a life where the only signal we needed was a voice calling us home.

xxx

Chronically Bex