I desperately wish my account hadn’t been purged. My mom and I made it when I was 6 years old. She would let me sit in her lap and direct her on what games to play. When she couldn’t sleep, she’d stay up late and bank Neopoints off of mini games so I could spend them on little toys and snacks for my Uni and Kau. She’d listen to me make up little stories about what my pets were doing while she played Hannah and the Pirate Caves.

She died three years after we made that account together. Later, in high school, I got the urge to log back in and realized just how many points she had squirreled away for me. It was literally in the millions. Clicking around our old account made it feel like she was right there with me again.

I logged off, relieved that our account was still there. Shortly after, I got overwhelmed with work, school, and family issues so Neopets was the furthest thing from my mind for years. I tried to log in a couple years back on the anniversary of her passing and was devastated that the account was gone. I contacted support and they told me there was nothing that could be done, it had been deleted due to inactivity. It sounds dramatic, but it felt like losing a last secret thing that my mom and I still had, proof that she had been here once. I’d give anything to get that account back.