Virtual Personality Disorder

I didn’t really have any New Year’s resolutions, but I have spent at least a dozen hours these first few days of the New Year merging my two virtual selves into one. A few years ago, I opened up a gmail (google) account under the name “dosninas.” (I had two girls at the time. Cute, huh?) For a long time, I did nothing with the account except for send and receive emails, and create folders for email messages.

Then I discovered the Calendar feature, which has caused me to abandon paper calendars ever since. I not only put my stuff on it, but my husband has his stuff on it, so we can see what the other person has going on. It’s great.

Soon thereafter, I discovered the “Documents” feature.  Oh, this was too good to be true, for someone like me who never, ever backs up documents on my computer. (And since both of our computers are half dead, this is a major issue.) So, I basically started using Google Documents as my place to write. And anywhere I went, I could pull up what I was working on via the internet.

And then, oh, and then I discovered Google Reader, where I promptly uploaded ALL of my favorite blogs.

Then, I had another baby girl, and couldn’t possibly keep the same email address. So I changed my email address.

At first I thought, “OK, I’ll just have two google accounts.” I used my new email address for email, and my dosninas account for documents, blog reading, calendar, etc.

But I found this to be, literally, virtually impossible. Because I’d be working on a document in my old account, and need to check my email in my new account, so I’d have to log off of the one I was working on to check email.

Anyway, I decided I just needed to take everything out of my old google account, and transfer it into my new account.  All my documents, the calendar, all my old, important emails, all the folders, everything has been transferred over. Now I’ve got everything switched over except for my google reader stuff, which I’m still trying to figure out how to import into my new account. (Suggestions, anyone?)

But here’s the point I’m trying to make. When I started sending emails from my old account to my new account, everything went over — including sent messages and trashed messages. Dozens of messages would appear in a matter of seconds, and looking over them was kind of like a “This is Your Life” marathon — everything I have ever said to anyone over the past 3 years, and everything anyone has ever said to me.

And you know what I found? All of the emails I’d sent and received during and after my miscarriages. All of the kind, beautiful words from friends and family members who let me know how much they loved me during the toughest time in my life. At the time I was in the depth of grief, I read each and every one, but then hit “delete” because I just couldn’t bear to see them in my inbox.

And after several months had passed, and I’d become pregnant again, I really regretted that I’d gotten rid of them. I wanted to remember what people had said to me, and print the messages out and put them in my special box. But so much time had passed, I had assumed that my trash folder had been emptied by google, and that they no longer existed anymore.

Suddenly, here they were. Dozens upon dozens of them. Some written by people I’ve known half my life, others who read my blog and had never before made themselves known to me. I cherish every single one of them.

There is much said about the permanence of communication on the internet. But in the most mundane of tasks — switching email accounts — I’ve been able to recapture a piece of my history, and remember those people whose support I relied on most. I’m so, so thankful for this.

But mark my words. I’m never changing my email address again.