Locked out of my life

What is your Halloween Horror story or creepy script pumpkin this year ? For me it was being caught in a crescendo of feeling like I was losing my mind...

I had been struggling to sleep all week due to a brutal jetlag coming back from a (fabulous, unforgettable, healing) trip to Australia. I had to use my Fitness App at 4 am to listen to a meditation to help me fall back asleep, which I thankfully did after about 1 h. When I semi-opened my eyes again, I was pleased to see on my phone that it was a little after 8 am. It is considered sleeping in for Maman Caroline, AKA Dr G ! Notifications indicated I already had some messages. I wanted to read them before leaving the warmth of my bed. When too rushed or asleep, I often mistype my passcode and must re-do it a second time, and on occasion, a third time. But on the morning of Halloween, I must have kept repeating the same typo at least 4 times because due to too many unsuccessful attempts, it said I could try again... in 1 minute. I started feeling very uneasy about this. It had never happened before. The memory of an info for something I am used to perform automatically, hundreds of times a day (because I need an App on my phone for work, like accessing EMR or doing medication refills) suddenly felt out of reach. I started doubting myself. My brain switched from procedural mode to eyes wide open and a mind tense with self-doubt. I left the territory of memory that is so integrated (such as riding a bike) to the full consciousness of panic. I was certain I knew the first 4 digits. For some bizarre reason, I had seemed to forget the last 2. The minute was up. I tried again. Nope. That was the wrong combination. Not too thrilled about wasting more time playing hide-and-seek with my memory, I considered resetting my password, but I am glad I didn't because it meant my data would be erased and who knows if I would be able to access them from the Cloud since it had stopped syncing while I was on vacation, my storage having gotten full (I am a ''collector'', remember ?). I thought I had a genius idea after that: go to an Apple store where my identity could be verified and reset onsite. It makes sense, right ? But the info on the internet said otherwise. I didn't know if anyone who had gone through this. I would have to figure that one out, in bits and pieces... How agonizing. Plus, if you add the shame factor to that (I always prided myself in having a pretty sharp memory), you have a formidable self-esteem-tearing combo...

I thought it was so ironic that the day before, I was glad I still had some important info stored in my phone, in the form of texts, some supporting documentation for a stressful situation at the moment. But I was no longer sure I could count on that.

The next time frame: I could try in 3 minutes. It started feeling like eternity. Some kind of cruel punishment. Or the Divine testing me with something... Better eat breakfast, get some caffeine in my body, and we will see. Ugh. That didn't do. Now I was no longer so sure about the second set of four digits. And the next try was in 1 h... 

Meanwhile, I had to record a podcast with my dear friend in Sweden, Chris. So attuned and kind, he offered me to skip for today. I preferred to proceed, sensing that I needed to leave this whole process of memory retrieval or activation in the back burner, just like a solution or a person's forgotten name suddenly comes back to us when we are doing or thinking of something unrelated. In order words, my brain, my whole being had to relax to let the automatic come back. 

The recording went well, thanks to Christopher's uplifting and hopeful spirit. I was able to be in the moment, and it felt especially good to be connected to a friend in this morning of confrontation with my relative isolation from the world. Not having access to my phone, I could only reach people via email, social media etc. Which is not always as immediate as texting. My discomfort started to grow again, thinking that my computer might decide to engage in its annoying habit, that it was time for an update without consulting me, which would result in closing all tabs and make me have to log in again, which would then require access to my phone because it needed me to indicate ''yes, it's me''. ARGGGL !

By the time the recording was over, the hour of grace had also passed. Before trying again, I decided to write down the few combinations I could still remember I had tried and that didn't work by putting an X next to each wrong guess and added other untried possibilities. I also drew on a piece of paper the cell phone keyboard with its 10 digits in their circle to practice with my hands and see if it felt right... 

To no avail. Now the next time I could try was... 3 h later. At 1 pm. I was reshuffling my whole day around this. I was gasping with horror at the thought that if I were to fail again, the next opportunity to access my phone would be likely something like 5 h later, if the trend continued, so not before 6 pm... If ever. My mind was spinning. I started a conversation with my dyslexia, and I invoked my synesthesia to try to re-imagine what combination my quirky brain and all its idiosyncrasies could have come up with. 

What the heck had happened between 4 am, when I clearly entered it right to do a guided meditation, and 8 am ? A mini-stroke ? Or, like my cousin remarked, ''the meditation completely wiped out your memory !'' I was about to call my mom to ask her to light up a candle and pray for Saint Anthony, the Patron of Lost Objects... as she had so often done so. I might as well have thought about some chanting ritual with incense and crystals (why not).

The code... locked inside my own memory, just like most of us made this unsettling experience of being locked out of one's house or car.

I was locked out of my phone. Which pretty much meant: locked out of my life. I had a sudden urge to see pictures of my boys, and all the ones I had taken in Australia. I could hardly see the end of this unbearable uncertainty, and hypotheses about people I knew who ended their life started forming... Is there such a thing as an emergency hypnotherapist to deal with similar memory gaps ?

Like I often do to calm my nerves and see if solutions or inspiration might emerge, I decided to move my body by walking around the block. I had too much time to kill anyway. I had just messaged my dad via social media to ask him to call me. That had worked (I had somehow hoped that, by taking the call, that would mean access to my phone would have magically been reinstated. I am afraid to say I have not been promoted from Naïvetéland yet...).

Instead of seeing the numbers miraculously appear in my mind, I felt uneasy because of a déjà-vu sensation. Doubting my own perception... feeling I was about to go crazy... Was my iPhone trying to... gaslight me ? What if I had the correct number the first time and with some kind of sadistic algorithm, it started playing tricks with me, with my mind ? 

To that atrocious feeling was added the sense of despair that comes from the realization that one is truly alone... Not living with any other adult or child on a regular basis at the moment, I felt really cut out from the world. I felt caught in a fantasy novel where I had just a few attempts to find a code that my survival would depend on.

I decided that this was a teaching of some kind. Another opportunity to become aware of how my mind works... I tried to retrace all my steps back to the day I picked that passcode 5 years ago (funny that I NEVER forgot it before, and I could even remember Andrea's own passcode to her phone while I was with her for 11 days in Australia, as it was more practical to let me unlock it to respond to friends while she was driving for instance).

I decided to trust my intuition again. To let my fingers guide me, not using the paper but sitting outside, moving my thumbs while keeping my eyes closed. Some renewed confidence arose in me after my right thumb traced a sequence in the air and that my left brain said that yes, it would make sense for me to have picked that sequence.

At 1 pm sharp, there was still another 2 stretching minutes to wait (you know, the ''dishwasher 2-min'' ?).

I took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and carefully tapped each digit like a mantra. It was like my thumb was dancing over the digitalized reality, bridging my mind and the at times enslaving technology. It worked. Ah, quel soulagement !!!

I could finally proceed with my day, inform the people who were trying to offer advice that I had cracked my own code, haha.

I think the morale of the story is that we should be conscious of how overly dependent on technology and digital devices we have become, and that it is important to have back-up plans. During the long 3-h period, I had recharged my iPad Mini 2 and even though I couldn't download WhatsApp because IOS was apparently too old (I must have had this iPad for 10 years now), at least I could still use FaceTime. And make sure you have some kind of ''will'' explicitly shared with others just like we have last wishes after death. Because the ''coma'' of my phone was almost the death of me, and if people don't hear from me in X amount of time, there should be a plan to get in touch with me and figure out what happened (the death of my phone or else).

Most importantly, maybe it was just a very intense reminder to recenter myself... and to not take everything for granted, including my memory !!!

On a last positive note, here is the Halloween I still had time to enjoy !