(WARNING! This is very loooooong!!)
About two weeks ago, after I had tucked Alex in and said goodnight, I headed to the bathroom so I could ahem...relieve myself... before starting the rest of my evening. I had completely forgotten about the fact that before heading to the bathroom, I had tucked my iPod Touch into the waistband of my lounge pants. So when I heard a "plop" in the toilet water just before I sat down, I was confused. When I turned around to see my iPod floating down into the toilet water, I was completely aghast, and didn't even hesitate to reach down in and grab it out. I promptly ran to the kitchen so I could clean it off (pants half down - no time to waste!), and told Jesse what happened, drying the iPod off with napkins the whole time, while my brain somewhat numbly tried to comprehend the consequence of this event. I gathered a bag full of rice and stuffed my iPod into it. It would need to dry out for at least a day, and rice was the most common way I've heard of assisting the drying process.
I waited three days while that iPod sat in the rice, also surrounded by a heating pad to gently heat it and hopefully aid evaporation. Initially, I was sure it would be okay. I grabbed it out of the water quickly, dried it off as fast as I could, and threw it in rice without hesitation. But when I started Google-ing "dropped my iPod in water", my hopes were quickly fading away. There was story after story of completely ruined iPods, and of course, water damage isn't covered under warranty. There were repair services online, but they were almost as expensive as buying a new one, depending on what needed to be replaced.
At the end of the three days, though, I still felt a glimmer of hope that everything would be okay - I would take it out of the rice and turn it on. It would be okay. It would work again. After all, hadn't I rescued phones that had been sucked on by babies? A good amount of drying always worked. This had to work, too. It had to.
So I sat down. I took the iPod out of the rice. I turned it on.
It didn't work.
At least, it didn't work right. The backlight wasn't working at all, so all that was visible was the faintest hint of a "charge battery" symbol. I couldn't seem to do anything with the buttons or touch screen to make it work and further than that. It was broken. Definitely broken.
My hopes were dashed into pieces at that moment. And I began to feel terrible. Just outright, completely, insanely terrible. Three days of drying - more time than most people suggested! I did everything right. And it still didn't work. I set my iPod down, and walked away. I went on with the rest of my evening, but this stayed in the back of my mind.
Over the course of the next several days, I experienced a deeper despair and hopelessness than I've felt in several years. It seems silly, maybe, to get so upset over a little electronic, but I think I found out why it bothered me so much.
At the end of the evening when I first discovered it was not working, I broke down into a puddle of bubbling tears while Jesse held me- it was the most uncontrolled crying spell than I'd had in probably more than a year. And when we went to bed, all I could do was lay there and feel miserable, until I finally ended up in another long crying spell. I cried and cried, all the while berating myself for losing it so badly over a thing. When the tears finally ran out, I found myself lost in thought until I finally fell asleep.
The next several days, as I already mentioned, left me far from feeling healed and ready to move on. I was stuck in a constant state of depression. I would cry on the way to pick Melinda up from school, or when I sat down on the bed while getting dressed. I didn't want to do anything. Not cook, not clean, not exercise, and certainly not avoid sweets.
There was a swirl of thoughts constantly running through my head. But the main underlying idea was that I felt like my iPod: Broken. I felt broken! I thought to myself, how could this happen? It was my one nice thing! I'm living my life the best I can, I'm doing all the right things. I've sacrificed so many luxuries to take care of my family while we struggle with unemployment. Everything I own is a hand-me-down or inexpensive, or if it was once nice, it is aging and showing it in really frustrating ways. I'm almost 30 years old, and I have nothing nice. The one nice thing I had is GONE! RUINED! And why? Because I was slightly forgetful and dropped it in a toilet as a result? It wasn't fair! My iPod did good things for me - it allowed me to enjoy music more often. It was the reason I was able to finish reading my Book of Mormon in under 2 months, while I laid with Alex in a dark room while waiting for him to fall asleep every night. I could listen to an audio book while I sewed. I could take it with all my scriptures and lessons to church, and have one less big thing to tote around with me. It had my contacts in one nice tidy place, and gave me easy access to maps. It let me access the internet when I had to spend hours at Jesse's family's house while we did laundry. It even gave me motivation to exercise when I found an application that helped me do interval running/walking while I listened to my music. All of that was GONE! It felt absolutely devastating. One single object had such a good role in my daily life. But at the same time, I wasn't obsessed about it. I never treated it like it was chained to me. It only left the house with it if I knew I would need it. Still, it did a lot of important, good things for me.
I began to feel like God was testing me somehow, so I began to analyze it. I've been doing relatively well with this whole unemployment, move-across-the-country, leave-your-friends-behind, try-to-live-with-barely-an-income-at-all thing. On top of it all, I've been dealing with some really crappy, persistent eczema that plagues me worse every day, but I try to not let it get to me. I've been mostly happy, looking forward to the future, hopeful that things will turn out they way they should. I've been so grateful to be near a good, loving, supportive family. I've basked in the joy of the big blue sky, the abundant sunshine, and the gorgeous Rocky Mountains. Sure, sometimes I really get around to missing things and people in Maryland, but mostly I know that this is where I need to be now, and I deal with the hard things fairly well. But when I suddenly felt like I lost the only nice possession I had, all of that came crumbling down. It was like the last straw on the camel's back. It was one thing I just couldn't handle the stress and loss of, and it led me into despair. I couldn't even talk about how I was feeling with my friends and family without getting embarrassingly teary-eyed and whimpering like a fool.
I thought often that maybe I should just use some of our savings, bite the bullet, and pay for a replacement. Some people eagerly supported me in this idea, saying I deserved it, maybe even needed it. But I was constantly warring with myself, also: I couldn't even justify giving $30 to support Melinda's school. How could I justify almost $300 - almost a month of groceries!!! - just to replace a silly little iPod? What if Jesse didn't get a job for a very long time? I would really regret such a purchase when we had no food!
What could I possibly learn from this experience? Did my Father in Heaven want to see me absolutely debased and humbled? I mean, I know we're poor in the income sense of the word... but at least I didn't feel poor. Aside from just the general friendship and love around me, it was nice to know that I had something nice in my life.
I was just beginning to start to convince myself to try to let it go, and live life without it, when Jesse decided to take it apart and see what he could do. A week after it had broken, he gathered up some tools and started disassembling my iPod. He followed along with some online guides, and once he had it taken apart, he swabbed everything down with rubbing alcohol, and then put it back together. Lo and behold, it started to work! The battery was just about dead, so we plugged it in and let it sit overnight. The next day, this past Saturday, when we tried again, it was fully functional. Everything worked normally - the touch screen, the speakers, the earphone jack, the accelerometer, everything. I was thrilled!!! Life was good again. Jesse was my hero. Again! It really felt like he honestly saved my life... he pulled me out of a really dark place just by fixing an electronic that one might argue I enjoy a little too much.
And then I started wondering about the "lesson" in all of this. I don't have an answer to this one. I thought that I would need to learn to live without even one thing I really enjoyed having, but it turns out that I get to keep on enjoying it. It honestly leaves me feeling a bit confused. What do I take away from this? I don't know! Am I supposed to take something away from it? Or am I just assigning eternal meaning to something that is just a nonsensical part of life, and was never meant to "teach" me anything?
Maybe I can better appreciate what Jesse might be going through right now. When I confided in him about feeling broken, he told me that he pretty much feels the same way, just by virtue of not having a job, and not having anyone even talk to him after applying for job after job after job. My heart broke a little more, hearing that. It hurt enough to feel broken the way I did. Imagining Jesse feeling like that for so long was just too much.
I got an easy fix, with him working his magic while I just sat and watched. Jesse, though, feels like a failure. He's far from it, though. Like I said, he's my hero. He's fixed so many things for me in the past. He's fixed me. Always there for me when I need him most. He continues to do what he can to keep busy and feel productive. And he'll be an absolutely fantastic employee once someone decides to give him a chance.
I suppose maybe all I can do is pray that I can be there for him like he's been there for me, especially now that I've experienced a little of what he feels probably every day that his unemployment continues on. I love him dearly, for everything he does and for everything he is.
We'll get there. Somehow, some way. Sometime soon, I hope. Jesse deserves it.
