The Things You Can't Let Go

 

I switch on my laptop and tap my fingers on the table impatiently. Every day, the laptop takes longer to get started. By the time it starts, it usually happens that I lose train of my thoughts, and I postpone my writing for another day.

It gets frustrating, to be honest. With a heavy heart I finally accept that the time has come to start using the new laptop that my husband bought. I switch on the new one and before I can take a breath, the screen lights up asking for a password. It doesn’t wait for a second after I have entered the last letter of the password. Within minutes, the screen is ready, offering me a whole world of possibilities.

My gaze falls upon my old laptop, and I gulp down the lump in my throat.

Isn’t it funny how we get attached to everyday objects around us? For me, my old laptop isn’t just an object – it is the canvas of my life. On this laptop, I have spent countless hours writing and dreaming. I have spent hours planning for family vacations. During the pandemic, this laptop ensured that my kid’s studies went on uninterrupted.

But more than anything, this laptop knows me – the real me. All my dreams that poured out in the form of blogs, all my musings, the innumerable unfinished stories, a whole lot of ‘novels’ whose first chapters have a separate folder for themselves, planners – oh, the planners! Weekly planners about meals, books to be read, articles to be written, blogs to be published – this laptop contains whole lives I have lived (and not).

My journey as a writer has been solitary for the most part. Like most bloggers, I struggle to get views, readers and recognition for my blogs. It hasn’t been easy and many a times, I have sat in front of the laptop, despairing for all my unread stories and blogs, and doubting myself. I have felt despondent while writing reviews for other books, hoping that someday someone will write such reviews for my book. My old laptop has been the only witness to my struggle. It has seen my frustration, my tears and my longing to be recognized as a writer.

How do you part with something like this? How can you not get emotionally attached to something that has been your soulmate since a decade?

You can’t.

So, while I type this on the new laptop, I know for sure that there is no way I will be giving up my old one. I may or may not use it, but it will occupy a place of honor among my books, a memoir of my journey as a struggling writer, the only companion in my literary journey and the only witness to all the moments of defeat and despair that I have gone through.

Because some things you just can't let go of, for they become a part of you.