I am not dependent on my iPhone. I am not I am not dependent on my iPhone. I am not dependent on my iPhone. I am not dependent on my iPhone.

I am not dependent on my iPhone . . .

. . . or so I thought.

I’ve had my iPhone 4S for about a year and a half and I love it. I don’t care that it’s a “cool” product (or, I think it is), I don’t care that it’s a status symbol (my model is so old that it’s really not anymore), I don’t care that it has the potential to run a million apps (I only have 14). The reason I love my iPhone is because my mum, dad, brother, sister, and closest friends from home have iPhones so we can still iMessage, even though we’re thousands of miles apart. I didn’t realize how important that was until moving overseas in August.

And then my iPhone started to unravel. It grew increasingly glitchy after I installed the iOS 8 update; with the more recent update to iOS 8, my phone became even more temperamental.  “I’m going to need a new phone,” I kept telling myself. I just didn’t expect that iMessage crashing would be the reason for the new phone.

A couple days ago I tried to send an iMessage and got an error message that iMessage was deactivated. When I tried to turn it back on, my phone beeped with an error – every 7 minutes. As I was trying to sleep at the time, I grew increasingly frustrated and, in fact, resentful. “Why are you doing this to me?” Silence. A factory reset and reinstalling the operating system did nothing to alleviate the problem. After a traumatic night when the phone wouldn’t even turn on and I had to download a widget onto my laptop to use as an alarm clock, I decided that enough was enough.

In moving overseas, I have learned that there are a few creature comforts and concessions to “the old life” on which I am not willing to compromise. For example, it is imperative that I buy fresh produce, no matter the cost. It is also essential that I can communicate with my family literally with the tap of a finger.  (Unfortunately, cost is a factor here.)

Long story short, I am dependent on my iPhone. I’ve come to terms with that over the last few days upon feeling my heart sink every time I think of a quick message to send and realize that I can’t. Looks like this weekend’s shopping will be more than just groceries!