Books in Boxes in 2014

So this evening I shall be packing all my major life events of the last 13 or so years into neat little PDF files and saving them away. The good ship OD has sailed her final journey and, whilst I feel a little nostalgic about it, I don't feel how I would've done 3 or 5 or 10 years ago. I'm glad this place came along first, thats for sure. If I hadn't already got comfy here I would be far more upset. I really only started a PB as a safety net, but I found I came here more and more often. Not just because it was generally more reliable, but because of that feeling of having a fresh slate but still having familiar faces. I've read a lot more new people on here in the last month than I have in years on OD, and I've written a lot more entries. I've also started reading people again who I knew from before but had drifted away from or had disagreements with, and its been good to have that freedom but without the unnerving feeling of being in a completely new pond.

PB is running really slowly right now though which I can only assume is the huge number of RIP OD entries lol.

I've downloaded a lot of my entries already, from the very beginning and the ones in most recent years. Tonight I have to delve into the middle section and I am reluctant and feel a bit sick. I don't like reading those entries that feature Tom. I hate any cringey entry about any ex but I especially can't stomach the ones about him. Some of them it makes me sad because it was so obviously not right from so early on. I don't know. It makes my skin crawl. Yuck.

There's a temptation to leave them of course. Let them go off into the ether, never to be seen again. But its all tied up with all the other things, things I want to remember. And maybe even the things I find hard to look at I still need to remember. If I ever have a surly teenage girl it can only do me good to have hard evidence of how everything feels like the end of the world when you're 16!

At the end of the day OD was just another website, but it has changed my life. And that might seem a ridiculous or dramatic thing to say but some of my absolute best friendships have been forged with people I've met on that site and I know I'm not alone in that. But the point is that even though OD is gone, those friendships will still be there, so I guess its not that big a deal in the end.

Here's to making new friends, and celebrating our old ones.