Broken Phones & Broken Hearts

Breaking your phone is a humbling experience. It's also a terrible experience which I'd only wish to happen to terrible people. 

One second you're life is normal and the next second all the pictures, text messages and screenshots of other people's embarrassing photos are gone. Completely unexpected without any warning or time for mental preparations.

My experience went a little something like this: Denial -> Avoidance -> Acceptance -> Panic -> and then Mourning. So many cute selfies lost forver. (Just kidding there weren't actually that many.)

But as terrible and heartbreaking of an experience as it may have been, it has taught me a number of great life lessons:

1) Always back up your photos. Even if you just got a new phone 4 months ago. Because sometimes you break your new phone and then you're only stuck with the old pictures that were saved on your memory card which you never cared for to begin with. 

2) I'm never to be trusted with breakable things.

3) That Sprint is the worst. And insurance that covers everything BUT screen cracks and water damage is not worth your time because they'll make you pay a million dollar deductible for a new phone anyways. 

4) That switching to T-Mobile may have been the best decision of my life thus far. Turns out you don't need to verbally abuse customer service for 3 hours a day 4 days a week to get your phone number changed. 

If I was smart, I would've gotten a Nokia phone and gone back to the days of T9 and playing snake. Because when those things break (if you're talented enough to figure out HOW to break them), your whole life doesn't shatter before your eyes. You may lose your high scores of snake, but if that's my biggest worry I think I'll be okay.

Now with these fancy smartphones we get so attached because our whole life is on this incredibly fragile piece of plastic. When your phone breaks, not only do you lose your stats on your 10 thousand games of freecell or your photo diary of your life, but you also lose connection to the outside world through 8 different social apps. 

I can go years with the same phone but I've managed to have 3 different phones in the past 5 months (I only broke one. Don't judge me.) And with each phone I go though a mourning process for everything that got lost in the transfer of devices. And each time I'm forced to become less attached to this expensive piece of plastic. 

Maybe it won't take a 4th phone for me to realize that it's just a phone. It's not my whole world and it won't be the end of the world if it breaks.