Breaking Up is Hard to Do
April 6th, 2005
By Archived Story
“Well are you sure you have files you want to get back?”
“No, I was kidding. I’M FINE LETTING GO OF THOUSANDS OF SONGS.”
“Umm, well ok, I’m sorry Miss, but there is only a chance you can get a few things off of the old hard drive.”
ONLY A CHANCE? I feel sort of bad for the person who had to spend so much time bearing my wrath. After I hung up from a two hour phone call with Dell customer service I wondered what percentage of calls end the way mine did, with harsh sarcasm and misplaced blame.
My computer makes that happy little dinging noise and out pops my Postal Service CD. One by one I am feeding the music I have purchased over the years back onto my hard drive. Some CDs have been lost in my house or have wandered the hallways of my dorm and never returned. My music collection has been demoted from over 8 wonderful days of nonstop, no repeat musical genius. I had an array of everything from the Rolling Stones to Joni Mitchell and back around to the Beastie Boys.
This wonderful yet eclectic mix was carefully gathered over the years of my music fanaticism, and in a few swift strokes of the key, the woman on the other end of the Dell hotline broke the news that it was gone forever. It is every music lover’s worst nightmare, the day that you lose everything. For a few days I would accidentally sit down at my desk, thinking I had something to do there but instead end up staring blankly at my useless piece of plastic for several minutes. The blank hard drive that came in the mail was a welcome sight, but only because I was able to use my computer again. Sending the old one back to the factory was like giving away my childhood pet to the “farm.” Turning it on and installing all of my software was not only depressing, but it also felt a lot like cheating. The old hard drive had been through so much with me. Not only did it contain a music collection that took years to refine, but it had all of my pictures, old papers, saved emails. A plethora of memories disappeared like a broken boomerang.
Now computer data seems trivial. All of my old saved papers, articles, emails are nothing more than documents I thought I needed. Sometimes my screen blinks or I can’t get the program to unfreeze and I think to myself “whatever, it doesn’t matter anymore.” I am suicidal in terms of this new hard drive. All hope has been lost and I am careless, forgetting to do fundamental things like install virus protection of any kind. This time when it was suggested to me that I just reformat my computer I had no problem giving in. “It’s meaningless anyways…” I mumbled at the support line girl, involving her far too much in my own digital depression. Some days I wonder if I can ever love again, if I will ever mend my broken trust in technology and truly take pride in what is on my computer. “Its only music” some of my friends say to try to comfort me, but it only makes me more angry over the fact that they cannot understand.
I have finally managed to put virus protection on the new drive. Protecting the last of my belongings in the least I can do. After all, I have the rest of college to collect sappy love song B-sides.
