It’s some ungodly hour of the night and my apartment-mates are probably deep in their third cycle of REM sleep. I’m in the kitchen, blasting the vent fan over my peasant’s meal of instant noodles. Like the MSG-loaded anti-food that I’m consuming, I’m salty as all hell. The Wi-Fi is down again and I’m trying to refresh the browser so that I can print off the dozen or so pages of the report I’ve just written. But I feel a pang of relief that despite how little sleep I’m going to get, it’s finally finished. I’m fantasizing about handing the report in hot off the press to my professor and then — It happens. The unthinkable.
Following years of lugging my laptop around with no protective case, maybe karma for complaining about slow Internet connection or perhaps that one time I spilled acetone all over the keyboard, my laptop quits. If Apple had an equivalent of the blue screen of death, it wouldn’t just be flashing on the screen; I would be swimming in it.
Stage 1 – Denial
Nobody actually loses her work in 2016, I think, holding down the power button like Rose should have held Jack. It’s still there. It’s just run out of battery. Never mind that the damn thing is literally plugged into the wall.
In a moment of brilliance, I check my email on my phone. I totally emailed this to myself! I open the file from 4:52 p.m. It’s just an Excel sheet of raw data.
Stage 2 - Anger
I can best characterize this phase with a string of expletives that would have been censored with an all-caps text to the text message. I'm angry at basically everyone who is remotely involved in this fiasco: my apartment-mates for being organized, the guy at Zoca for taking away precious work time when he burnt my quesadilla, my adviser for letting me take a 'writing-intensive lab.'
Stage 3 - Bargaining
The gravity of the situation finally weighs on me, and it doesn't help that none of my sleeping friends can validate my short-lived anger. Here begins the saddest place, where every last shred of dignity is thrown to the wind. Every prayer I ever learned in Sunday school surfaces, and I promise God I'll start waking up for morning prayer. I'll change, I promise.
I'm not proud of this next part. I compose an email to my instructor that drips of desperation, as emails only can at booty-call hour. My laptop broke is the dog ate my homework of our generation and my hope dwindles. I'm screwed.
Stage 4 - Sadness
Spotify plays the angsty tracks from my middle school days, and at least Avril Lavigne and I can lament together. I think of all that could have been and imagine the disappointment on my parents' faces when I have to drop out of school. My only consolation is the girl who I can see outside my window, retching onto the curb outside of the bar across the street. In that beautiful moment, I forgot about how no one will clean her bodily fluids and the stench that will result. I realize that we are together: just two girls with a slew of regrets at sunrise.
Stage 5 - Acceptance
After the 10 minutes since my computer has crashed, I've experienced a range of emotions. All of these feelings make me uncomfortable. I accept how irresponsible my actions were and accept that I'll probably be in this situation again. I turn on the Keurig, chug some Monster and head for the library. I'll sleep when I'm dead, speaks the first delusion. I work best under pressure, agrees my inner voice. I can take 10 percent deduction. And finally, I'm buying a PC.
