An Ode to Open Diary in After OD

I'm sad. Beyond sad. Heartbroken. Open Diary literally changed my life. I wrote my first entry in the spring of 2000 at the age of just 14 years old. I started a diary just as a way to keep in touch with a friend, and it grew into something so much bigger. Over the years I made friends all over the country and even some across the world. I ended up meeting my husband through OD, and this year marks our 10th wedding anniversary.

A simple place to write about your day to day life and log your thoughts and feelings, turned into a real community. People who despite the fact that they never met face to face, cared deeply about one another and their lives. And today with the announcement of it's impending shut down, so many of us are grieving the loss of that community.

I thought Open Diary would be around forever, and I'd be writing there until I was old and gray. However, in a few weeks it will be gone. All I can say is that it's memory will live on through the diarists who continue to write elsewhere, all the lives that were changed and the connections made within it's pages.