Goodbye, chibi_bento

I tried to log onto my old email address yesterday (the first one I ever had, the one Biku and I set up back when I didn't really know what 'chibi' or 'bento' meant, back when Hotmail was still the new thing everyone was just getting into). And it was gone!

Well, not really gone -- all my contacts were still there, but all my old messages were erased. My long conversations with Biku when she visited Picton, my messages organizing canoe trips, my hilarious exchanges with my cousin Nick. And while I'm not too sentimental about such things (I kept them on a whim, since I don't usually re-read old letters), it made me really sad to realize they were all gone. A link to my past had been severed, and I was hit with the realization that there's no going back. I'm an adult now, for better or for worse, and the days of me as the "dwarf lunchbox" are ending.

This isn't to say I can't be silly, or have fun, or write weird messages anymore, but I can't go back to what was. As I mentioned in the post on my Japan blog, I am increasingly seeing my time in Japan as another hurdle/watershed/coming-of-age time. That's exciting, but also (when things like Hotmail erasing all messages happen) kind of sad too.