The same thing happenned to me. I joined FR in 1999, but forgot my password. So I joined again in 2000 under this screen name. So I have actually been on FR for 8 years, not 7.
I also changed email accounts several times, so that makes it hard to find my information off old email accounts because I don’t have access to those any more. A lot of times, if you forget your password, they will send it to your email account. Problem is that I cannot get in that old email account anymore. It is easier to just start over sometimes.