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I was here when Gaia was go-gaia.com. I remember so much of it, and as I once looked through the old posts of my oldest account, I evidently saw the history I made. I remember when the most expensive item was probably only 200K, and the sash only being 80K. Now, prices has escalated to, what, 10mil?

HeartBreak Hotel, I remember it well. I wish it were only yesterday, yet I realize I didn't make much of an impact in the storyline- no, I was a 13-year-old girl with no idea what the heck true roleplaying was. I remember my posts, the posts I wish I never typed, full of chatspeak and incomplete fragmented sentences. And now, it's almost a miracle where, 6 (or perhaps almost 7) years later, I'm writing in complete sentences with no chatspeak (devoid of OMG and WTF, of course). Thus being, Gaia was a huge role in my life. I would race to my computer after school ended, hoping I could catch a few people on the thread I loved so dearly. I fooled myself into thinking love over internet would work, and it broke my heart and made an impression so deep I denied myself the changes. I remember when HBH was burned down, others tried to revive the haven we all built by making new threads of HBH. It never worked. We all branched off, separately, and made different storylines of our own lives thus in the world of Gaia. I faded slowly off Gaia for a while.

I was foolish, back then, much as I am now. But I remember my time spent here. I remember when Towns was up, I was a tester for it, though I had no idea how it happened. I remember meeting friends in Towns, one in particular that I fell in love with due to his very different personality and language use. Of course, this was in an admirational sense, but still, it made me rush to my computer after I woke up in the summer. He was my idol, someone I looked up to. Again, it was short-lived. A dream, if you will.

The more recent of myself I found was drifting into the Q&A section of Gaia, answering all the questions along with someone who was an idol in the Q&A. I remember how desperately I wanted to contribute, to be thanked and perhaps even become a Mod (which I knew would never happen). But in that process of that goal, I eventually became friends with a few moderators, and people who knew them, too. The Q&A was my home, somewhere I could live and make mistakes with someone always there to correct me. It wasn't much of a race, but I felt it was fun. I tried to get online all the time, and without being in the Q&A, I felt ill and unsettled. I was told that even if I wasn't there, there were still always going to be questions. I felt foolish but still, I loved the Q&A. Eventually, I stopped going on Gaia, only to sign on to check PMs, comments, and friends' journals, or to ask a question I know would get instant responses from the T&C forum.

Gaia has been such an integral part of my life, one which I won't be able to let go, but still watch over as if it were a precious stone growing in worth and changing so much. I miss how intimate users, mods, devs, and the higher-ups were, being informal and still changing a lot of things and little bugs. Gaia has changed so much beyond what I can handle. It's much too much corporated, too many ads, announcements, additions... it's almost now a faceless corp. only with the higher-ups showing their faces and giving the site characteristics through the personality of being at conventions or occasionally dipping into the mass forums.

I'm glad to be a part of it's history, but I'm sad to see it going downhill and forgetting users as individuals, rather than a "profit" or "mass". I understand why it's going where, but as an individual, I cannot stand to see this. This isn't my good-bye, rather, it's more of an explanation or justification, if you will. I love Gaia, but this isn't it.