Can't Stand Losing You

Last week Comcast shut down the port through which we were sending out our e-mail leaving us with lots of stuff piling up in our OUT box but nothing going anywhere. Hindsight being 20/20, I can tell you now that Comcast shut down the port through which we were sending our e-mail, but at the time no one at Comcast was able to tell me until I'd spent over an hour with tech support and tried numerous other solutions, the least amusing of which involved deleting my e-mail account and re-entering it. The woman at tech support assured me that I'd be able to retrieve the 500 e-mails that had been in my IN box. The assurance reeked of a couple out on a first date, "of course I'll call you," he says, "yeah right," she thinks but she goes along with it anyway because what else can she believe? All the e-mail were, of course, lost.
"But don't you feel lighter in a way?" asked a friend when I revisited the incident a few days later.
I suppose it is something of a relief to have them all gone without having had to decide for myself what to do with them. Then again there's something validating about having 500 e-mails in one's IN box in a philosophical, "I have e-mail, therefore I am," kind of way. In light of how my world is about to shrink down to taking care of the needs of two tiny people, and only sporadically sneaking in contact with the outside world, the loss of the e-mail seems ominous, a bleak harbinger of things to come. As if someone is saying, "well, you won't be needing these any longer, just get on the couch and start lactating."
Moo.

song: Can't Stand Losing You • artist: The Police