I can’t stop beating myself up over lost AirPods

[Hamilton87]

My lovely partner bought me a pair of AirPods for my birthday in April 2023. I did have some before but they were stolen on holiday.
At the time he didn’t have loads of money so I was really grateful for the thought and for the effort.

Only 2 months later, in June, I lost them. I have no idea how, I remember taking them to work. The last location registered on my phone was in my car on the way home from work that Wednesday evening.
I didn’t notice they were lost until the Friday, and the location hadn’t been updated since Wednesday so they must have died.

The location was never updated after that and has since said “location not found” which makes me think they weren’t stolen.

Since then I’ve sold that car. It had a deep clean and I didn’t find them. I have also since moved flat, and they definitely were not in my flat. I have looked everywhere - bags, pockets etc.

They literally disappeared off the face of the earth.

The thing is, this was nearly a year ago now. And yet, every now and then I get a huge pang of guilt over it. How I couldn’t look after a very expensive present and lose it within 2 months. I’m so scatty and didn’t look after them. It just makes me feel awful and I still feel determined to find them even though they’re likely gone.

How do I deal with the ongoing guilt and pangs of feeling absolutely awful about it?

What are you making it mean? Is it helpful to you to keep beating yourself up about it? What would you say to a friend who has written this?

Are you usually scatty or not usually?

I think these are the easiest thing in the world to lose, OP. Don't beat yourself up. You didn't do it on purpose and you haven't been unkind.

We all lose things. I bought some AirPods and I just know I'll lose one or both of them!

It does sound like you were careless but it was an accident.
Are you an anxious person? It seems an extreme reaction to be feeling extreme guilt a year later. And a bit at odds with the lack of care in the the first place. Has your partner given you a hard time about it?

It's normal to lose things at times in our life. They just happen. Airpods are very easy to lose!
Did you claim on insurance to get a new pair?

Just buy another pair? 🤷‍♀️

I lost mine. Tracked them and they were at the tube station so I thought no chance and wrote them off. Found them in a pocket of a rarely worn coat I could have sworn I checked a year later. Clearly the tube was when they last had signal/battery. Of course I’d already replaced them by then so gave the old ones to my niece who was thrilled! So they may yet turn up. But don’t beat yourself up about it. They are so easy to lose!

Absent mindedly losing stuff and then having intense self-critical reactions are features of adhd. Have a google for Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (rsd) and see if it rings a bell. It helps me enormously to know there’s a name for the tsunami of self loathing that overwhelms me over things like this.

Everyone i know who has these has lost a pair before. Its easy to do. Your post reminded me of my brother who once told me 'I lost my Bluetooth earpods at a party the day after buying them and was so angry that I immediately bought myself some new ones'.

Still baffled... but a good insight into how men think and feel! Insane how much we are taught to beat ourselves up as women. Buy yourself some new ones and never think about it again.

Read the room.

They’re expensive. Not everyone can cough up £200.

As with pretty much everything, the most important thing in my mind is to try to learn something from this. You say you're generally scatty, so if you were to get more AirPods in the future, knowing they're small and easy to misplace how will you try to prevent that happening?

You can't do anything about what has happened in the past, but you can try to prevent the same thing happening in the future. So if you do eventually get another pair of AirPods, get a case that clips to your bag or keys at the same time. Then you'll always know where they are.

I lost my Samsung buds on the train. Somehow dropped them and they just disappeared.

I've got cheap earphones now, I think they were about £15. They do the job and if I lose them it won't feel quite as bad.

Some things are made to be lost. Ear pods. Sunglasses. Lighters. Tweezers. Lip balm. Pens. Don’t beat yourself up, in hindsight you should have stuck to a cheap pair so it didn’t matter when they inevitably got lost but YANBU that you didn’t know that at the time.