Even in the era of smartphones and tablets, paper remains a trusted medium. It’s surprisingly ubiquitous when you think about it. You find it in various forms from the moment you open your eyes each day until the moment you go to sleep: there are the posters on your wall, wallpaper, and toilet paper—without which we endure a moment of crisis. Stores give you receipts; concert venues give you a ticket; that book on your bedside table is full of paper.

It’s thoroughly embedded in our daily lives, which is probably why we take it for granted. For most of its 2,000-year history, it was a luxury item that only the wealthy could afford.

Paper seems smooth, but its surface is actually rough and varied. It’s the same with the earth: viewed from space, the earth appears a perfect sphere, but when you live on its surface, you are aware of how pocked and pimpled it is. Paper is like a tangled bale of hay, but we wouldn’t know it without a microscope.

Most paper began as a tree. It’s made of the cellulose in trees. Extracting cellulose involves separating it from the glue-like substance in wood known as lignin.  “Delignation” requires boiling wood in a chemical concoction. It takes some doing. It’s kind of like trying to get gum out of hair. When it’s boiled down to a soupy pulp, it’s brown in color and looks like watery noodles at a microscopic level. To make paper the sheeny, smooth stuff we are most familiar with means another round of chemicals.

People tend to trust things that are in print. It gives a sense of permanence and even lends an air of legitimacy. When you read a story in an actual newspaper, you’re likely to trust it—even if it’s false. A new website seems comparatively transient. The online medium is literally not as substantive. The newspaper is a beloved, but disappearing convention. With the transition to digital platforms come changes in our social habits. Reading the morning paper with cup of Joe, using old papers for kindling, wrapping gifts, or catching paint are mostly behind us.

And let’s not forget love letters. They are one of the best and most impactful that communication has to offer. Texts and emails are easy and gratifying for their speed, but there’s nothing like getting a letter from the beloved, seeing that person’s inimitable script, knowing that your lover has touched the very same paper you’re holding. You can read it over and over again. Paper affords this experience in a way that phone calls and SMS simply cannot.

Of course, this makes breakups particularly painful for the same reason. Fortunately, there is a ready remedy because paper is carbon-based: just find some matches.