7/5/17: The night my Instagram account was deleted

Update 7/7/17: Apparently there was a bug that made it appear as if certain people's Instagram accounts were deleted, but they really weren't. YAY! Article 1, article 2. It's fixed now and my account is back.

Last night I was making a photobook on Shutterfly, adding pics from my Instagram account to my book (like I don't have enough photobooks already, right?). You know, how you grant access to a third party or something so they can link up and pull photos from your social media accounts? That was the last time I had access to my account. An hour or so later, when I went to bed and clicked on Instagram, it was just gone. Poof. Vanished. No more. So much for sleep!

The following gut-wrenching dread followed suit. I frantically searched google, messaged Instagram on Facebook since that's the only way to reach out, but it's of no use. All Google articles said a deleted account can not be recovered. There used to be a form where they would individually go in and figure out what happened, but they don't do that anymore. Well fuck.

Thoughts that ran through my head:
That was a lot of work, I had over 1100 followers
8 years of memories, gone
Time Hop won't show me memories anymore
I feel like I'm in mourning over a stupid app
I wish I would feel more free, less burdened, but I don't
At least I didn't shed tears. I was really close, but I didn't
At least they didn't delete Lachlan's separate private account
At least I still have the photos on my phone or camera so all is not completely lost
But fresh start?
What if the people who followed me on that account, don't want to follow me now?
Could logging in with Shutterfly have provided hackers some sort of hacking window to my account?
What the fucking fuck?
What else can they hack into of mine?
What was that girl's user name?

So I've been wracking my brain all morning and part of last night to re-add the some 600 people I was following, though I've only managed to remember under 100 so far. So many IVF girls with the first three letters in their user name being IVF that I can't remember! So if you would like to re-add me, I'll remember you that way. I would appreciate it. My new account is @habitual_homebody

But yea, it's funny how many people's user names I only remember the first few letters of because if I was ever going to tag them, their name would pop up and I would just tap on it. Now, I can't find anyone because of all the special character placements, funny spellings, numbers that I don't remember.