Diaryland Gave me Closure After 20 years
The other day I mentioned that there was a Diaryland 2.0. I also mentioned that I had emailed the creator to see if I could get access to my old diary.
I have not heard back from them. That’s OK because something else has happened.
I went back there and thought I’d read some current posts. I’m interested in the ones that were talking about this new 2.0 version. One such post mentioned that due to the upgrade / migrating servers or some other magical reason all the old diary’s that hadn’t been online for the last 20 years were now there.
I think the official rule was if you hadn’t updated in 6 months your diary was deactivated. Although I think there was some technical problem that happened once as well.
OK, back to the main story. I went and checked and my whole diary is there.
Holy shit.
No more trying to see what the internet archive had saved. The whole freakin thing is there out in the wild.
I’m not sure if it will disappear or not, so I’ve been saving as many entries as I can into Obsidian. There just isn’t enough time between sleep and work to get it done overnight.
So where’s the closure part mentioned in the title?
Well… it’s a long story and I debated writing it out, and I probably won’t but here are the key points.
- Way back in the day I started talking to this girl online (crazy how our paths crossed)
- She was amazing and wonderful in so many ways.
- She was very sick
Eventually we drifted apart, we never met in person which is my largest regret in life.
Time moves on a bit as life does.
I’m informed she died. :(
I also get this note on Diaryland telling me the same thing but in different words from some account I don’t recognise. I don’t think I see this until a lot later.
I visit their site. I think at the time I did this things were broken and I could only see a fraction of what they had published, much like my own diary.
From what I gleaned from it, they were engaged. Very happy with each other, but still dealing with her sickness.
That part didn’t bother me. Like I said I’d moved on, my mush filled unformed brain was leading me to other things.
I always felt it strange that I got that note.
Over time all of this nagged at the back of my brain. Just wondering what exactly happened in the end for her.
I was resigned to the fact that I may never know. An unanswered question to add to the mix of feelings and thoughts that bubble up from time to time.
That is until yesterday.
While I realised my diary was up and running. I also worked out that her diary was now alive on the internet.
It didn’t hold any answers, but it was nice to see more of her writing.
She was smarter beyond her years. Her writing just hits differently even after all these years later.
This morning it dawned on me. If these diaries were now back from the dead, the dude who left the message and was engaged to her, his must be alive as well.
Lucky for me I can remember random things. So when I looked, there it was.
He had some posts about her. One of which was the last conversation they ever had. It answered a lot of questions, gave me some more info and in the end brought me closure.
Over 20 years later.
Like I said it’s a long story. One which I was just a small part of, but one that has stuck with me all these years.
All of this reinforces to me just how powerful writing can be. Being able to read things 20 years later on a digital platform is amazing.