Closure: Selfish Friendships and Forgotten Love

Disclaimer: Following post is an expression of feelings from my side of the story and is completely personal. Names are and shall be undisclosed to stop direct coincidence with the person talked about in the post.

As I think and write this blog piece which I think will provide me with some sort of a closure from what happened a few weeks ago, I know you would be enjoying your time in a beautiful place with love surrounding you from all sides. As I think about how much that incident broke me, you would be celebrating life around you. As I try to find my mistakes just to get some sort of an explanation I was trying to get from you for doing whatever you did to me but without any avail, you would probably be enjoying the newly found freedom which you said you would get. 

I wanted that freedom too, which you naively declined because “it doesn't matter and you don't matter."

Convenience? Freedom?

I don't know why you did whatever you did to me and I don't get what I did to deserve such wrath from you. And that when I asked you to explain the reason to me, you stated that "I should cope up on my own." And that "You have had enough"

Enough?

Remember how I dropped you home when you were ill? When it didn't take me a moment to leave all my meetings and priorities just so I was there for you in times of crises. Remember the time you told me if you faced a heartbreak from your lover you would want to "sing Taylor Swift songs with me". Remember the time when you told me all your problems whether it was a lone man in the park you were in, or creepy messages on Facebook, or your summer love, which was another convenience you had. Remember the time when you told me that we are "kinda best friends" but well, kinda enemies now I think to you.
Remember the time you asked me to proofread every article because you couldn't "do it alone."

I remember too.

I remember how I was used every single time for your benefit. And how you were absent in almost every big thing I had, every little celebration I was having, when a congratulation was too heavy a word to come out of your mouth.

While writing your statement of purpose for a major conference you told me you needed me to complete it. You remarked that your "Motive is selfish." I think I understand now that you've always been selfish. Since the first year when you asked me to write a breakup letter for your ex-boyfriend because you didn't "feel anything for him" and how it was very mean to do that. 

I think you've always been a mean little girl to everyone who has ever been close to you. 

Like your school's best friend. Like me, kinda your best friend.

I now know that you were the slow poison that was killing me from deep inside. That there was always a trust lacking, maybe from the very start. Such thoughts, mean words and ideas suddenly don't come in a single day. It is a process, not a single sudden thought. Such selfishness which wouldn't even let me, a person who was very close to you, have a closure is too strong to be embedded in the mind in one day. Maybe series of events made you realize I was wrong, but well, little time does it take to talk your grudges out if you want to sustain the friendship.

It was your choice to pop in my life and pop out of it just like that. It dawns on me that I can't really change the choices of people, and I don't even want to now. The world is a disappointing place when it comes to keeping faith in other people. That I shouldn't have raised any expectations in you when you yourself admitted that your motives are selfish. Maybe that should've been my cue of incoming danger to my self-respect and I should've stepped back. Little did I know that my pleading for an answer was not something that you cared about. I would have taken all the blame on me, but would that even matter anymore. It wouldn't and it never had and it never will. That everyone is allowed to make their choices even when they might affect other people negatively but well, that's how everyone is. I think I should make mine too and move on. There's no point on spending time on someone who didn't ever care about you. Well, I might have been looking everywhere, in every person, a place that I may call mine. But little did I know that I am the only place I can call mine.

That it is time to forgive myself for all the decisions I made, the ones which I refer to as mistakes now, made knowingly but still unknowingly. That my high anxiety disorder which made me want to think about situations and questions which will never matter to anyone other than my family and my lover. 

Her jars of empathy are always empty so much so that now she disgusts me like the rotten egg disgusts people around it. I am ashamed to have befriended her.

You asked me to cope up myself. I think I have now.

I wish you all the best for your future and may you get whatever you need. May you get to know the value of feelings and friends and empathy in future, which might let you have a sustained relationship with your new love. May you understand my intentions. May I understand the intentions of people who cross my life. May you get the freedom you wanted. May I get the closure I needed. I forgive her. I forgive me.

Brought Back From The Dead

Well, this post is about my shiny black Nokia Lumia 630 which was launched in May 2014, and I got it in August 2014 with 8 GB internal memory, 512 MB RAM with Microsoft Windows 8.1 OS which I lost in a series of unfortunate events. I accidentally dropped it in a bucket full of hot water which I was going to use for a hot water massage for my legs. Knowing that hot water causes potential damage to the motherboard, I washed it with running water hoping the motherboard would be okay but unknowingly caused much more damage than I could imagine. And because I have a strange emotional attachment to my phone, I did whatever I could do at home and followed the steps which are given on the community page of Microsoft but without any avail. The phone wouldn't just start! 

I then visited the only support centre of Microsoft Phones in South Delhi and got my phone inspected and to my utter shock, the repair required another motherboard and that was not available in Delhi. The shipping charges would cost me around 5k and well, like any other engineer, I don't have that much money just for the repair (I could've bought another Lumia 630 in 5k). I then sought the help of my friends and wrote this post wishing someone would help me. Luckily, a few of my friends (John and Chirag) turned out to be brilliant and one gave me the assurance that he would get it fixed in Hyderabad office of Microsoft and another gave me the emotional support that I was not the only one facing these crises. It was then that my mentor, my best friend and my senior, Saksham, arranged for an unused Lumia 630 from some friend Yogesh and Chanpreet, a mutual friend helped to hand it over to me. 

Now the good news is, it is fixed and working smoothly! 

Just like it did when I bought it. I had to do the motherboard replacement because Nehru Place vendors thought I had stolen the phone and were giving me awkward looks, but it turned out to be the simplest task that I had done in my entire life. So I would not take up much time now and would dive straight to how I replaced the motherboards. 

Here is a step by step procedure! 

1. Remove the back cover with your fingernails.

2. With the back cover removed, your phone will look like below. Now remove your battery and the black sticker by simply levering it up. 

3. Now remove the seven torx 4 (T4) size screws from the upper body which are seven in number.  













4. Turn the phone on its side and you'll see two more screws. Remove these screws as well.

5. Now lift the battery compartment over from right to left. You can now access the ribbon cable, connected to the motherboard. This cable has a plug and socket type connection, so lever it up, away from the circuit board so your screen is now free from the rest of the phone. 

6. You can now remove the camera. Again, this has a plug and socket type connection, so lever it up, away from the circuit board.

7. Your motherboard is now free of all the connections and to replace it with a new one, simply lift it away from the housing.

8. The motherboard replacement is now done! Reverse the process to assemble the phone and use it! 

Happy? Happy!