It all started so nicely.
It was the week I had booked off of work to just sit around and relax. I'd work on my novel, I thought, and try to build a bit of the new and improved DestroyedorDamaged.com. So I woke up on a crisp November morning, sat up in bed, turned on some White Lies and set out to do just that - build a storytelling, article-writing online empire. Switching my computer on and watching it load up, I could already sense that something wasn't right. I'd already had my morning wee, so it wasn't that; I had poured myself a nice glass of cold cranberry juice while I was up too, so it's not like I was thirsty. No, something very abstract was wrong. There was something in my wallet or my personality or the World Wide Blogosphere that was terribly, terribly wrong and out of place.
As is always the routine, my first move was to log in to Windows Live Messenger. Or at least, try. I don't save my password on the computer just in case someone ever steals the laptop, so I had to retype it manually every time the damn Messenger said "There was an error signing you in.", which was many, many times. Frustrated with the program that seems to be broken in some way every third time one tries to use it, I decided to manually check my emails by heading on over to Hotmail. Even the air began to smell... wrong. Just, wrong. Still, I typed in my password and felt my brain tingle with the beginnings of panic as the webpage said Invalid username or password. Nonsense!, I thought, and retyped it.
Three times it rejected me before I clicked Forgotten your password?, my hands beginning to tremble and my skin breaking out into a cold sweat. I knew the answers to my secret questions (Who is your favourite female pop star? - Justin Beiber; What is the Elephant Man's real name? - Kerry Katona), but even when I entered them the site still threw them back into my panic-stricken face. This was all very, very wrong. I had lost every email I had ever sent or received in one night! Without my secret answers or my password or my e-mail, I was nothing!
I remembered my other e-mail address, the one I use to send anonymous abusive messages to celebrities and anonymous futuresex/love letters. Maybe if I could save that, I could save it all! Maybe I could rebuild my online life from the foundations laid by a creepy, abusive e-mail address. So in the top box, from a drop-down, I chose "phantom@destroyedordamaged.com", and in the bottom I typed my password (dianavickers2010), and hit enter. A whimper, a real audible pathetic whimper, left my lips as the webpage looped straight back to the login screen, along with an Invalid username or password message.
The same happened with the e-mail addresses I manage for O and Pulkse. I tried the secret questions again, but this time I didn't even know the answers. Pulkse's account was set up in 2004 for Derren's sake! I tried to access Pulkse.co.uk, just to see if everything had been taken. Indeed, it had been. In one night, my entire online identity had gone. Disappeared. Been pocketed by a pilfering pickpocket. As this realisation sank in, I began to sob. I cried until my eyes were red and my breath was jittery and beaten. I wailed like a baby for minutes at a time. Even the realisation that there was one more website to try hardly stemmed the flow.
Facebook. That was the final avenue. The last ditch. Clicking the link in the Bookmarks bar of Google Chrome with damaged trepidation, I watched the browser load the login page and dreaded intensely what might happen when I typed in my password. My e-mail was entered automatically, so I typed the password slowly, character by character, my eyes still streaming with tears and my lungs drawing in breath in jagged bursts like a weeping baby. I hit enter, and my world was destroyed. It didn't even leave a second before the login page reloaded, and my entire online life was snatched away. Can you imagine how it feels to lose everything in one swoop? All your e-mails ever? Every wall post, picture, event, message, relationship status, attachment, subject line, FW:, RE: and liked page? It is all-consuming. It takes everything away. Even though I still had all my limbs and my health, I didn't want them anymore, because my e-mail address vickersismyfuturewife@destroyedordamaged.com was gone, along with everything I used to do with it.
I screamed and wailed and cried so hard that I lost consciousness. I don't know how long I was out for, but I woke up in a dark room surrounded by empty bottles of Vodkat and Asda own brand gin, stinking of tears and piss. The only light in the room was the screen of my laptop, still on, taunting me with the Failed Login page of Facebook and the Invalid page of Hotmail. I cursed the wretched machine, still drunk and distraught, slurring my insults at the Global Weboweb through my flushed, tear-soaked mouth. I kicked my legs with fury. I bashed the keyboard with my numb hands... and that's when I noticed it. The very device that had convinced me my life was ruined. The only thing in the world that stood between me and safe entry into all my e-mail accounts, my Facebook, my Blogspot. The little shit that had conspired against me and stolen my passwords and changed them into something distorted that no server in its right mind would ever accept.
Caps Lock.
