gone... but not forgotten

the universe really does work in mysterious ways sometimes.

my last blog entry, “emptying the cache,” discussed the contents of my brain, and how much accumulated emotional clutter fills its nooks and crannies. i talked about wanting to clear some of that stuff out, and about my seeming inability to do so.

this morning, in a weirdly ironic twist of e-fate, it seemed as though the universe had perhaps read my blog the other day and decided to facilitate a bit of a cobweb-dusting in its own, not-exactly-what-i-wanted-or-expected way.

in my ongoing waffling about facebook and whether i want to maintain or power-down my account, i’ve clicked “deactivate” a few times, but (as mentioned in a previous entry) have never been able to fully follow through. i googled to read about other people’s experiences leaving the site behind, and discovered how easy it is to just log back in and automatically reactivate everything if you change your mind... so long as the email address you’ve been using is still valid. you get a deactivation email to confirm, and a reactivation email to confirm if/when that time comes, so you need to be able to access those messages when they arrive.

well, the email address i’d been using for FB was an old one. one that i’d used often in the past to sign up for members-only websites and such, but one that i didn’t really check that often at all anymore. i hadn’t logged into that email account in a while, and decided i should probably make sure i still knew its password so that, if i did decide to deactivate FB, i could also REactivate it as needed.

so, i called up yahoo! mail, and entered my username and password.

and a screen popped up, notifying me that my entire account had been deleted due to inactivity.

wait. what?

evidently, per the automated message, i hadn’t logged in to that email account in more than four months, so yahoo! automatically deleted the whole thing.

all of it.

all the messages in my inbox, all my saved messages, everything.

gone.

i felt a big clunk as my stomach dropped.

though i barely used that account these days, i did have messages saved there that i actually wanted to save. little nuggets of my past that i’d kept for sentimental reasons and personal ones. events, moments, messages or people i wanted to remember.

the emails had been erased without my knowledge, and have now disappeared forever.

i was given the option of reactivating the account, which i did, but once i had access again the account was still completely empty. everything had been cleared out in one fell e-swoop, and that was that. (and p.s. – nowhere did it ever say “caution: log in at least once every four months or the contents of your account will be toast!”, so thanks for the heads-up, yahoo!.)

for about a half-hour afterwards, i felt quite sad. because of my own inaction, i’d lost these small, special-to-me things that i’d saved for years, and there was nothing i could do to retrieve any of them. assorted pieces of my life were gone in a click. the blame spiral began to swirl and i could feel myself running on the hamster wheel of “woulda, coulda, shoulda, if only.”

but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that the universe was probably just giving me what i needed, and perhaps doing for me what i couldn’t seem to do for myself. i started to think about why i’d held on to these messages, and reexamined what it really was that i’d lost by having them disappear. i think the answers to those questions will likely be part of a bigger blog entry to come at some point but, for now, i do realize that my memories of those events, moments and people in my life are intact even if the messages – the physical “evidence” that they existed, that they happened – may be gone.

so, i mourned the loss of the emails, and studied my lesson. i’ve since changed my email info on facebook to a more frequented address, so that walking out the door AND still being allowed back if i so choose in is still an option. and, if nothing else, i’d like to think this involuntary electronic housecleaning was perhaps simply one of those “i’m doing this for your own good” nudges from the cosmos.