I read my old messages

I went back through my DMs with early users recently. Messages from a year ago, when the product was rough and I was excited about everything.

Reading them was strange. The enthusiasm was real. Mine and theirs. They were actually rooting for me. They gave detailed feedback. They said "can't wait to see where this goes."

Almost all of them are gone now. Not angry. Just gone. No goodbye messages. Just silence.

I don't know what happened. Maybe the product didn't deliver. Maybe life got busy. Maybe they were just being nice in the beginning. I'll probably never know.

The hardest part is I can't tell if I lost them or if I never really had them in the first place.

Have you ever gone back and read old messages from early users? Did it help you understand something, or just make you feel worse? And how do you handle not knowing why people leave?