This post was submitted by Domina Vontana

Last month I did the unthinkable. I quit my cell phone. It’d been a long time coming. My friends are speechless. My clients are blissfully silent. And it’s not like I’m without a phone. There’s still one at the office and one at home, and since all I do is work or hide in my apartment I’m still more or less available. In the meantime I’m learning how to text using SMS and google mail and it’s fun.

I was 12 when the world went online. The first generation of cell phones were large, gray, awkward boxes strapped to the belt loops of boys at my high school. They were super unsexy and hardly struck me as a status symbol. But the boys kept buying them and strutting around with the devices banging about their buttocks. I gobbled up my first cellular phone for undergraduate and was glad to see my $300 a month long distance bill disappear. What the fuck were all those fees?

I’ve never been a gamer and I don’t give a damn about apps. I’m sick and tired of people shoving their phones in my face so I can glance at unintelligible images I don’t care about. But what I really can’t stand is the constant chatter of text messages. Sometimes I just want to scream at the world, “Leave me the hell alone already!”

The first time I spoke on a cellular phone for more than twenty minutes I had to hang up on my Grandmother because the phone was too hot to hold next to my ear. Then I endured a raging migraine for the next several hours while I attempted to care for mentally, physically and emotionally vulnerable patients in their homes.

That’s when I knew something wasn’t right. But it was the acne that was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I am allergic to nickel which is a nice way of saying I can’t even wear cheap earrings without my lobes swelling up. So after enduring years of pimples, marks and swollen glands beneath my ears, I’m over it. I have spent thousands of dollars on facials and the best beauty products available and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let some nonsense like a cell phone undermine that investment.

Before you write me off as crazy, let me tell you why I dropped my cell. Why after all these years did I go ahead and finally do this thing? I’m trying to write. No! I am writing. More than ever. And I’ve been writing my entire life in one way or another. I’m writing not just for The New Gay but at work. Suddenly I’m a resident sexpert and I’m teaching classes that require an organized curriculum. Plus that revenge fantasy memoir I’ve been developing in my head for years is ready to hit the pages and the process is taking over my life. It turns out I require hours of silent reflection and meditation to move passed the emotions toward the images that are the story.

Quitting my cell phone was the fastest way for me to make more of that kind of space in my life. Well that and dumping every lover I’ve had for the past five years, save one. I’m wide open and declaring myself free to be me even if it seems arcane. I’ve always been a real time gal with little tolerance or appreciation for keeping up with the Kardashians or anyone else I’ve never had an actual conversation with.

I’ve always felt half in and half out of this electronic age, straddling an imaginary line that leaves me part native part foreigner. Ten days after I quit my phone I found her again, sitting at the bus stop. Me. My original thoughts and voice returned to me and for the first time in a long time I was able to tap into that yearning deep inside that I’ve had since birth. Sometimes I feel like I have a head for an antenna and eyeballs that fly around to other universes while I sleep. All of this sensitivity is a blessing in disguise, but sometimes it’s just all too much this beeping techno world.

So I quit. I quit my cell phone to save myself, my sanity and my writing career. And I couldn’t be happier with my decision.

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