Digital Loss
⚠ Warning: SH.
In 2017, I lost all of my digital files in my laptop.
I can still recall the memory as if it was yesterday. It was late afternoon. I was doing my homework assignment in the office near the frontyard. Suddenly my phone rang. It was our Mother. I answered the call. After some back and forth, she said, "...All of the files are unrecoverable, except the ones in the desktop." She said this in her mother language, of course. I need to translate this to English. Otherwise, it would trigger the kids here. Anyway, I closed the call. I blanked again. Then the next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor with the worse headache of my life. Now I realized that I had given myself a concussion.
I remember slogging my way back to my room. I blanked, again. The next day was school. I was in high school. I remember what I wore that day. Black hijab with checkered flannel and black pants. I was still wearing the hijab... Anyhow, I just finished English class. I blanked. Then the teacher saw me cry. News spread fast. She already knew what happened. Then the other teachers too. I don't know who knew and who didn't. All I remember was that the principal knew. It's unsurprising given that it's a small, informal school for creatives, and that the principal is a relative.
I went down the stairs to the principal's office. I remember crying some more. Then I started sobbing. Everyone was sympathetic towards me. I didn't dislike it nor otherwise. I just felt a wave of grief that I couldn't contain. It didn't care that I was in school and I had classes to attend. It didn't care that I didn't want my peers and teachers to see me in this state. It just had to be felt.
I blanked again... this is a hard write. Am I picking on an old scab? Or has this wound healed enough that I could write even the first sentence of this blog entry? I don't know. I just feel compelled to write about this eventually. Not a lot of people know that I've lost my entire digital files back in 2017. Not many more people know that I developed obsessive-compulsive symptoms from this event.
I would obsessively check my files. I would check them again. And again. I would ignore messages from friends and families just to check and re-check. To build rituals around backing up my files then calling it "just organizing" to anyone who asked out of shame. Hours and hours spent on simply checking and re-checking. And once I grow tired or overwhelmed, perfectionism kicks in. I'd stop creating altogether out of fear of losing said file. I'd stop taking pictures, drawing art, taking pictures of art, saving anything at all. Then the cycle repeats.
But it has gotten better. I think with time and a lot of slow exposure, the pull to check diminished, and so the cycle of perfectionism collapsed and I feel compelled to create again. However, the urge is still there now and then, especially when I'm trying to search for a certain file, I get the itch to check and then the spiral starts from there.
Nowadays, I'm doing relatively fine with creating again. The event still lingers in the back of my mind... not a day goes by where I don't grieve over all the digital files I've lost. I did mention, though, that everything was loss except the ones in the laptop's desktop. So what's in there?
Writings. Or more specifically, the Writer's writings. I don't resonate with writing nightly dreams as much as before. My dreamscape is more for daydreams. But regardless, the digital writings from 2015 were saved. That was the only thing that was of any worth to us.
Ever since then, we wrote. And nearly 24/7. It was as if a new part had taken full role of it (wink). It became a routine to write as a hobby. At the time, drawing became the source of burnout for me and the Fighter (mostly the Fighter). So writing became the new escape. The new hobby. The new joy.
I could write about how writing became our job but perhaps that's up to the Writer to write on hehe. I'm just here to write about a time when my "drawing tablet broke" and share it to the world wide web.