I stayed up yesterday with a group of idiotic Open Diary folks (I mean that kindly :) ) and we watched as OD went dark yesterday.
I got teary, and then I felt stupid. But then I reframed it for myself and it made sense.
OD wasn't just a website. Altavista was just a website; it used to be my favorite search engine and then I think last year yahoo got rid of it. I hadn't used it in years; google supplanted it. Altavista was gone. Ah, yes. End of an era. Moving on...
That wasn't Open Diary.
For those of you who have sought (perhaps temporary) refuge here, how did it change you?
I talked to a guy on the phone (while I was married to my ex) for hours and hours one night when I was feeling really low. I remember doing it. He married someone from OD a few years later.
I "met" a wonderful young woman named Kati, and I watched her get married and have three terrific children.
Why does Kati matter? Because when I was getting divorced (after she was already divorced) she suggested a relatively innocuous dating website that I don't think I would have found (or wanted to use) were it not for her. I met a guy on that site and that guy became my husband.
I "met" a witty attorney from Florida and now I'm a part of a terrific and private facebook group with a bunch of (mostly) ladies who think as I do...or don't criticize me when they DON'T think the way I do. She sends me Christmas cards every year.
I "met" a kindred soul from Washington State who sent me a plant (that I later killed, because I have a terrible black thumb) when my baby boys died. She also sent me towels when I got married. My first wedding presents. I still remember them (and still have them).
I met (in real life) a wonderful Louisianian when I was pregnant with Chelsea who not only sent me amazing memorial gifts for my boys (and some FABULOUS things for my daughter!) but who also bought me dinner in New Orleans and remains one of the coolest chicks ever.
My husband, on a business trip, met a wonderful family in Florida that I have known for as long as I have been on OD practically; she fed him dinner and he got to meet their amazing adopted son and wonderful other children.
Last year, I graduated college in Missouri. A long way from home, but I had a terrific party in the lobby of a Residence Inn. Two of the three people there were OD folks I had met previously on a trip to St Louis; when I was dragged to Ted Drew's :). These two ladies drove to my hotel, brought ice cream, and congratulated me on my accomplishment. Had it not been for Open Diary, I would have had a decidedly sedate gathering, or none at all.
There are more; many more that I could write out. Don't be upset if I forgot you; there are nutcases in California, or in Florida, or in Ohio that I didn't even references. Or Pennsylvania, Georgia....I say "nutcases" but I mean this fondly, lovingly. With reverence.
This was my community for nearly 14 years. And the thing is, I have long lasting friendships from that connection.
What I admit is, that for the last few years, I didn't really develop close friendships from the site. It was...different. I'm a creature of habit who hates change, so I guess once I connected to those that I cared about, I didn't really go looking for new people. (And I didn't include Facebook friends, which were added later and I have some great ones).
Thus, maybe I accumulated the friendships I was supposed to, gathered the experiences I was supposed to have, and that chapter is over.
It simply coincides with all of the changes I've been having in my life in the past 18 months.
I have more to write, such as stuff about my daughter and kindergarten and whatnot, but I'll leave it here.
Oh, wait...how did I leave it?
There was debate about whether or not to delete my diary. Everyone seemed to have a different take.
Deleting the diary felt, to some, as a means to "take control" of a situation they were not in control of. For others, deleting it took away Bruce's power in the event he planned to...I don't know, make a movie or write a book about what people had written. in the final days of OD, the entries were littered with "copywrites" (intentionally misspelled)
Some couldn't bear to delete their diary and decided to let it "go down with the ship" so to speak, as a sort of permanent piece of cyberspace. Some found the act of deletion so permanent, almost as a sort of "suicide".
Naturally, I had to be WEIRD.
I wanted to delete it. I wanted to take control. But every time I tried, I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill it.
But I didn't want to leave it. I didn't want to abandon it. I didn't want anyone else to "have" it, either.
So I spent about 2 hours in my recliner, munching doritos and sipping ice water. Until my fingers were sore, I manually deleted almost 3,000 entries. It was like moving out of a house, room by room. I didn't read any of the entries, but I noted their titles. I could remember some of the contents of the entries by their titles. I slowly deleted the parts of my life...early marriage, job changes, surgeries, the terrible death of my children, the pregnancy with Chelsea, her birth, my adjustment, her needs, my return to school, my graduation, Joshua's arrival, all of it.
For two hours, I worked to empty the contents of The Burdens Of Being... which was the title of my diary.
Do you want to know where that title came from, by the way?
The name of Tracy Bonham's album was, "The Burdens of Being Upright".
I felt the way too. I also felt the burdens of being...
Productive. Healthy. Relevant. Fertile. Intelligent. Motherly.
Anyway, I spent two hours deleting every entry except the last one. I left my last words to hang in the empty space. I admit, there were a few HAL 9000 moments as I felt the essence drain out of that place, but it was still me. It still existed. It was as if it was waiting to be refilled with new memories, except there wouldn't be new ones.
As a last moment, probably because I just couldn't bear it, I managed to open my diary one last time and type a few words. I saw the front page littered with "goodbye" messages, like desperate shouts into an impending darkness as the minutes ticked by.
And then it was gone.
And it will probably always be gone.
It was more than website. It lived and breathed...and died.
And now I am here.
For now.
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