A messy morning

For any of you reading this in the morning, I apologize. I know that even looking at a picture like this in the morning makes you feel icky. It was like that for me in real. I ended up with this mess on a Monday morning. Wondering why?

Because I couldn’t find a watch. A Fitbit. The one that was given to me as part of a study I was enrolled in. In my department. Which I was supposed to return after the end of the study (1 month ago), exactly when I had flown out of the country and hence, had been trusted enough to have kept it safe and secure, to return it after coming back. Loads of trust and responsibility were placed in me. Unquestionable. Undoubtful.

And here I was. Soon after receiving an email from the study researchers, looking through every possible item, every possible drawer in my room. Realizing I have a lot of stuff.

Every time I searched a place inconclusively, I would put more pressure on my hippocampus, in the hopes that it would lighten up and show me the exact path to the gold of the moment. Every small failure to find it sent bigger shock waves across my body. The sheer thought of the humiliation I would have to face. All the other humiliation-worthy stuff I have been doing amplified in my head — the most recent being late dropping a course, which would not really matter for a PhD student as they would say, but it has been troubling me for the past 12 hours when I got to know I had missed the deadline of regular drop by some 22 hours. Although it was a genuine miss because I was busy for real, but I ended up telling myself that I was a careless wreck. That editing a 120-minute long interview of my grandfather, which had been pending for at least 4 years now, and I couldn't procrastinate any further because it was his 94th birthday and he deserved a grand celebration of his amazing life journey, and my mom and I had been wanting to do this for 4 years (don’t judge me for all the pending stuff I have, Covid happened in-between and yes, I am going to use it as an excuse shamelessly), wasn’t a good enough reason to be occupied with it so much so that I ended up missing the deadline for dropping. “So careless, so irresponsible!”. Oh the harsh voice inside me, returning after (I’m happy to say) years, (but of course not-so-happy to see its return), deriving its sadistic pleasure of beating me up, making me sound like a masochist.

Anyway, I returned to searching for the lost Fitbit, of course, while my brain swam in the most relevant and calming thoughts of the hour - what if someone stole it? Someone definitely stole it. I should ask my roommate. I am sure the door knob looked weird when I came back. There was an attempt to steal. But why only the Fitbit? I looked for the little gold jewellery that I had with me, which I had managed to store away at a very non-findable place (can’t say it out loud, what if it gets stolen the next time). I felt a little sense of pride to find it where I had intelligently kept it. I opened the box and looked inside for a couple of seconds, and realized there was a pair of earrings missing. “Oh my god! There was a robbery here indeed!”. Trying to pressurize my hippocampus even further, making it think about what did I do with those earrings? Did I take them back home? Gave them away? Pretty sure, I have not worn them in a while. If I haven’t worn them where did they go? Checking the list of items my mom had put inside the box for me to remember (she trusted I can lose stuff easily, or atleast she knew that memory isn’t the most reliable in times of panic, thanks mom!). I confirmed that there were supposed to be three pairs, which means I’m not panicking for no-reason, I need to find them. And the second search began within the first one. But lo behold, as soon as I opened the dresser drawer I found it there, lying peacefully as if staring at me to say why are you looking like someone who just recovered from a heart attack, I have been here for a while now, all good and intact. It was a sigh of relief, seeing that pair at least. I kept it back where it belonged, feeling some confidence that my life was not entirely out of control, there still was hope. And maybe the robbers didn’t care to look for the earrings because they were happy with the Fitbit. Maybe they didn’t know the value of gold jewellery, as it was more of an Indian thing.

I decided to take out all the items from the drawers, one by one, check all the coat pockets, maybe also lift the bed and see if I kept it there (no wonder my friends call me creative), note that I thought I would have kept it there, not that it would have fallen down the bed, I was pretty sure it didn’t fall. Maybe I should check the boxes I kept under the bed for DIY crafts, maybe my past self would have thought about where all the robbers would not look. Under the bed, in random boxes. Or maybe in food packets. Behind the TV. In the dustbin? That was another fear I had. What if I had thrown away the Fitbit? What if I was too blind to see that I was throwing a watch and its charger together? I was most surprised and amused at the fact that the charger was missing too. Of course, the robber was smart. Why would they take just the Fitbit? They want to use it, and hence the charger.

I pulled out my suitcases, what if I had kept it inside, safe and secure? Or maybe just threw it in a corner of the wardrobe with all the ‘Misc’ stuff which doesn’t have a proper place to be stored in, like an extra laundry detergent that I bought a few months ago or a few unusable bags, waiting for their fate to be determined. It is funny how the brain works in times like these, either I stored it properly, or I was just careless enough to toss it in a pile of random stuff in the dark.

Finally, I was giving up, trying to google a way to locate it, realizing I had not synced it to any locator app. Then I thought maybe I should look again, one last time, in the very first drawer I had opened and had begun the search because I couldn’t find it there. Or maybe I should start this second round of searching at the places, where I had already used 2 different senses (sight and haptics) to look through everything. Maybe I should’ve thought of using other senses like smell or taste. When I opened this drawer, I tossed the stuff inside half-heartedly, already preparing myself to accept my defeat, thinking about facing the humiliation in the department and that’s when I saw, the not-so-shiny, the not-so-bright, the so handsomely dark and dull that it was almost not visible Fitbit and its charger lying there.

The joy that ran from my head to toe is indescribable, all the thoughts in my head dissipated and the only feeling that I could feel was relief. Looking at the watch, I sat on the bed, chuckling at my victory. After a few seconds of verifying it was the right charger and this was for real, I put it aside, and lifted my head and voila, the scene you saw at the top was what was in front of my eyes!

Now before I return to tidying up this morning's mess, I thought of giving you a thrilling start to the week!