Replaceable

Let’s recount the past three weeks of life as context: car accident resulting in a totaled car and severe whiplash. Missed work. Miss job interviews. Botched spring break for my wife. Fear when driving through intersections on a daily basis. Two ER visits. A torn rotator cuff. Wearing an f-ing sling on my arm for the first time in my life. Then, this morning, by some epic twist of fate, my cell phone slid out of my survival suit, which I wasn’t even wearing at the time, and plopped into the water like a cold hard turd.

Flash forward to this afternoon. It’s a gorgeous day by the way. Like, a pristine Seattle afternoon. But, nothing feels right. Nothing is coming together. I can’t seem to articulate what I am feeling in a coherent way and it keeps changing. I feel one way one second and then totally different another. I feel grateful, then depressed, then lucky, then despondent. I feel angry. Then joyful. I feel hopeless, then full of aspiration and optimism.

I dropped an expensive cell phone in the water this morning. So what? It’s really not a big deal. Yes its a lot of money, but it’s also something that can be replaced. I have the money to get a new one. But I just couldn’t really put losing this small electronic device into perspective most of the day.

I’ve run the gamut of emotions. I went from feeling hopeless watching my phone bounce off the dock and drop into Lake Washington knowing it was gone and there was nothing I could do. Momentarily I contemplated diving head first into the water to try to catch it as it sunk. And then relinquished myself to its inevitable plunge. Then I went into a state of panic thinking what the hell was I going to do? Then I became enraged so much so to the point that I screamed at the top of my lungs like a baboon on steroids. I kicked a trash can like a total d-bag. It got ugly. And my self-talk the whole time was that nothing was ever going to work out. That everything was always going to be difficult and hopeless and awful. I cried. I screamed. I hit my arm rest in my car with a clenched fist. Twice.

Then on the drive home I felt very low. Depressed. Hopeless. Almost empty. I felt flabbergasted and shocked and hollow. How could a damn cell phone elicit this kind of insanity?

Then I felt almost like it was a good thing that my phone fell into the water. I felt like it was some cosmic energy trying to keep me from being addicted to my phone. To get me to spend my energy on other things that are more important, like exercising, and making eye contact, and actually doing things like taking the dog for a walk or writing or drawing or  baking or taming our wild and overgrown yard.

Then I laughed about it. What kind of insane reaction is it to scream and kick things when you lose a phone? It’s not like I got my arm shot off or got run over or like someone blew up my house. It’s not like I dropped a cupcake on the ground icing first, which is a true tragedy.

And then it made me emotional in a giving way. I wanted to make all the things I had done wrong lately right. I wanted to reach out to people and tell them that I love them and that I’m sorry for being imperfect and not giving them my best. To tell them that I’m human and struggling but I can do better.

But, the thought of buying a new phone makes me feel conflicted. On the one hand I miss my shiny perfect object that tells me the time, and lets me check my email, and gets texts from my friends and family, and costs a lot of money.  My precious. And on the other hand I miss my sanity. I don’t even know what being sane means anymore. On the other hand I miss being untethered. How many hands is that? I don’t like needing to touch my phone all the time. It’s pretty. I need to pet it. And then open my Gmail a few more times. I touched it again. I miss not needing my phone to tell me who I am. I miss not needing it by my side every minute of the day. I miss me.

I feel tired. My eyelids are tired. They’ve had enough. I wish I could just plug myself in and recharge for the night. Hit reboot. Update my software. But I’m not a shiny little metal strangler of human being-ism.  I need action and movement, food, light, love, touch, taste, sight and sounds, smells, warmth, hugs, and other human beings and living creatures to feel alive. Those things aren’t replaceable. Those things don’t need a shiny shatter proof case. I just need a heart beat and a brain and some reality.

And I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. What isn’t replaceable is the friend who is willing to don scuba gear, jump in the lake between jobs, and dive down fifteen feet through murky unknown waters to find my phone. What isn’t replaceable is the friend who lives next to the boathouse who took time out of his day to apply his patent-pending drying method for phones dropped in the lake. What isn’t replaceable is the friend who came over to sit with me in the sun to make sure that I was ok and to comfort me. What isn’t replaceable are the wonderful, loving, understanding, patient, giving people that surround me. What isn’t replaceable is the unconditional support from my amazing wife. What isn’t replaceable is a hug.

Hopefully that’s something that I’ll keep in perspective next time.

What isn’t replaceable in your life?