Drumroll please for Open Diary! in The Road Ahead

I’m sure other people are getting emails about it too, but in case you haven’t seen or heard about it yet, it looks like Opendiary.com is going to be reopening it’s servers soon! This is huge news for me personally, and as a member of the former community.

Writing has always been a way for me to get down the complex and frustrating concepts I deal with down onto paper, maybe no less congruent or comprehensible, but certainly more organized. I started writing in a small journal when I was ten years old, it laughably only contained bits of dreams and nightmares, and it was kept in that “safe space”, you know, between the mattress and the box spring. I was afraid to write anything substantial or incriminating, I lived in a world of fear at that time, a prison where the bars were stocked with Bacardi and the idea that my diary would be found and read seemed certain to me.

Fast forward to late eighth grade and I’m in the school computer lab when I stumble across Teenopendiary. It was a community of like-minded, or at least like-aged people also dealing with the shitstorm that is puberty and the harrowing descent into adulthood. Without the fear of my parental units coming across it, I started writing frequently. I wrote about what I was doing in school, who my crushes were, and how things were going at home. And although I might not remember the screen names anymore, the connections I made on Teenopendiary were hugely impactful on me, and I found the internet to be a halfway decent place to share my thoughts, not to mention find other people like me. Eventually Teenopendiary was rolled into OpenDiary, and the community grew even tighter. Other writers that I’d been growing up with were also entering this new territory, now much more mature and thrilling, leaving our childhoods and turbulent teens aside for more grown-up pursuits.

Opendiary is where I’ve met some of the best people I know. They’re friendships that have lasted for more than a decade and I’ve even gotten to meet a few of them! I did meet my ex-wife on Opendiary, which is something I’m working through ahead of it’s future re-launch date. I met her fairly early on in OD history, and we spent a good portion of our then-budding romance messaging back and forth, a seemingly endless repertoire of witty one-liners and inappropriate haikus that still make me laugh. Opendiary was instrumental in our growth and was certainly the vehicle that allowed us both to escape situations we were unhappy with. It might be weird at first, to be in familiar territory that’s new, like seeing through young eyes in an old body.

But I’m so excited. If a quarter of the community comes back, it would be a vibrant, wonderful place. I’d be ecstatic to try and reconnect with old friends, some still usernames, others familiar faces. I found a lot of support in OD, when I was struggling with pain, with trauma, with the loss of my loved ones, I found support and kind words that helped me stay connected. It holds a very near and dear place in my heart and I’m so happy to be going back. <3