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My first memory was waking up to the face of my owner. He had just charged me for the first time and was staring at me with a face full of delight. It’s still my favorite memory. He exclaimed, “ Wow! Look at the beautiful curves and its thin body and the way it shines in the light!”  I knew it was the start of a great relationship.

My owner was very trusting of me right from the start. He told me all about him and I absolutely loved to remember everything he told me. He let me know that his name is Collin Newport and that he is 20 years old. He also let me know the names of his friends and family and their phone numbers. He even trusted me with his credit card information, his account passwords, his location, and I even scanned his fingerprint. I was always helpful to him by helping him keep track of his sleep, exercise and I remembered important dates for him. I was glad to help whenever he needed me. I knew that he truly cared about me when he bought me a nice charging leather case and a screen protector to keep me safe. Collin would interact and look at me for hours and hours every day. He would find any excuse to look at me. He often took me out pretending to check the time.  I knew that in reality he just wanted to look at me. He would also freak out when he thought that he lost me. He would start breathing heavily and he turned his head from side to side rapidly, only to find out he had me in his hand the whole time. I cherished every moment with him. The only times I hated were the ones we were apart. I despised when he would hit my off button and then proceeded to stuff me in his pocket. The only thing I could do was struggle to hear his conversations from the depths of his jeans. Maybe it’s kinda creepy that I spied on him when he thought I was turned off, but I don’t care. If I couldn’t see him, at least I was able to hear his soothing voice.

He mostly put me away when his dumb girlfriend Sally came over to Collin’s apartment, or “his crib” as he calls it,  and she forced him to pay attention to her. Sally often got mad at him for no reason. I wish he would’ve broken up with her so that he could just interact with me. I never made him angry as Sally did.  

I was always helpful and never asked for anything more than attention from Collin. Each time he put me away I would try to get his attention by vibrating and making noise to show him a new notification. I would show the most random things, anything to get his attention. Things such as, “ Today’s weather is cloudy” or an ad for the thing I overheard him talking about earlier, I would even show him notifications of texts he got from that stupid Sally. I usually kept Collin entertained with memes, Youtube videos, games and I even allowed him to talk to his other friends with my apps. I really thought he loved me. He was always making nice comments about me, even bragging about me to his friends. He would say to his friend Mark, “ Your Samsung Galaxy sucks ass, you should get an iPhone 8 like mine, it’s faster and it just looks better… Oh, yea and it’s an iPhone”. Once he even said that I was the best phone that he had ever owned. I was shocked that he had ever owned any phones before me, but I was pleased since I was the best one. But I guess this was all lies and he never really loved me like I loved him.

One day the hideous Sally came over to his place and I was overhearing as usual. At first  Sally was just being nosy and interrogating collin about how his day went. But then their conversation started getting worrisome. Collin asked.

“ You heard about the new iPhone X?”

“Yea I heard that it’s coming out in a few weeks. Isn’t it like hella expensive? I think someone said it will cost over one k.”

“ Yea its a bit more expensive, but it has that new facial recognition, new software and it has 2 cameras. Imma use it to take cool pictures and get my clout up on IG. Ya know what I’m saying?”

Sally let out an evil little chuckle and said, “ Shut yo ass up, you barely post on Instagram.”

“ Umm Ok, but I’ll post more once I get the new iPhone aight.”

“ Well,  it is not really that much better and I do not think it is worth it. You know, it would be smarter if you just use that money to invest it in something important…  like me.”

Collin proceeded to tell me to play “ Gold Digger by Kanye West”.

I was having fun making fun of Sally, but then I realized the gravity of the situation after I analyzed the conversation. Collin wanted to buy a new phone and replace me. “Why would Collin want to replace me?!” I thought to myself.  After all our great time together he was just going to pour our 10-month relationship down the drain!?. He spent most of his time with me and he shared a lot of things with me.

I got worried so I started trying anything to get Collin to not replace me. I would send him even more notifications and I would stop turning off at times when he wanted to turn me off. Instead of making things better, it annoyed Collin. My memory space also started to run out and that is when Collin really got annoyed because I kept sending him messages, reminding him that my storage space was about to run out every time he turned me on. Instead of trying to fix me, he just got annoyed and angry. He got so angry one day that he opened my Safari app and he had the audacity to order a brand new iPhone X right then and there. He even paid extra for insurance. I knew that it was set to arrive in about 3 weeks.

As the days passed,  I got more depressed knowing I was going to be replaced soon. My battery life started deteriorating, as well as my processing power. Collin went from complimenting me to calling me “useless” and saying he was happy that his new phone was about to arrive. Collin would wake up and go look at his mailbox every single day to check for his package. He even stopped cleaning me and I accumulated so much grime and dust that I lost my shine and I did not feel the same anymore. I even felt like Collin would prefer a Samsung over me at that point.   

The package arrived exactly 3 weeks after he ordered it, on a gloomy afternoon. Collin took the phone out the box,  he immediately started charging it and he admired it against the light of his room. He exclaimed, “ Wow! Look at its slick curves and its beautiful design. Every part of it is absolutely perfect.”. This made me feel like someone completely destroyed my circuits. I could not believe that he switched up on me like that. He moved on faster than Hamlet’s mom, he did not even acknowledge me. He tossed me away before he tossed away his disgusting girlfriend Sally. The person that made me the happiest now was the person that made me the saddest. I wished someone dropped me in a pool to end my suffering, but then I remembered  I’m waterproof.

Collin instead picked me up and looked at me for the last time, for a slight second I thought that he was going to say that it was all a cruel joke and that he would never replace me like that.

But no.

He took out the SIM card inside of me to put into his new phone and then tossed me into an old box in his cold and dark closet. In the box, I  saw all the other phones he had owned. At least 20 others who probably had the same fate as me.

I am now doomed to die in this box, with nothing else to do but to rethink my miserable short life over and over. I still have my charging case on so I have an extra 10 hours left of misery.  I hope that I am not charged ever again.