The unintended result of deactivating my old account is that there's no way I can ever retrieve it.
When I was on Twitter, I was given a 30 day buffer. If I reactivated my account within 30 days, I could just resume as normal.
Based on what I've read, retrieving my old account is impossible because of security reasons. That's something I never considered would happen. I guess I was just too used to how things worked on Twitter.