my phone's turning a year old this weekend, but one look at it and you think it's older than that. it's taking such a beating the last year that i had it, and sometimes, when i see my brother's new phone or pat's hi-tech gadget, i can't help but want something new, nice, and scratch-free. however, at the end of the day, i know i love my phone and wouldn't trade it with anything else.

my life the past year has been so much like my phone. i've taken such a beating -- my first 5 ever, the incident with jay, the my parents' eventual separation, and the stress of continuing to work full-time in a sometimes thankless job -- that i feel i've aged more than a year in the last 12 months.

but much like scratches and dents on your phone's casing has a little story to tell, like how the first major scratch on the screen's left corner came from that time when you were exchanging SMS with your crush when your phone took a nosedive on the concrete floor, each battle scar tells you something about how the past year was. There are things you'd rather forget, but there are things which you proudly bear also. That little callo that began forming on your little toe came from wearing stilettos during your first hearing ever. roots showing shows how long you've been with your new love affair, recalling the mad rush to the parlor to have perfectly-colored hair the day he arrived from bangkok.

yesterday, i had the worst day of my life. it seemed like everything that could go wrong, did. but today, i don't know. somehow things are a bit better. when i was in the courtroom this morning, a couple of young boys were handcuffed to each other, apparently in jail for some misdemeanor, awaiting their hearing. a couple of guys who were obviously still in college had an aunt in tow, ready with their 30,000 pay-off for their attempted murder case.

yup, life can be worse than the life i'm leading.

so what if my one-year-old phone has the biggest and most awful dents any one-year-old phone has seen? it's still much better than a whole lot of other phones out there.