His nickname is more widely known than his real name and I don't know what else to call him, so I'll call him Tim. It's a common enough name and that's the name he always posted in my guestbook. I've contemplated writing this thought for nearly two years now. When I first met Tim (through email, naturally), he was very protective of me. He immediately took on the role of an online father figure of sorts. He would constantly post in my guestbook replies to other guestbook entries (yes, he was used to message boards). When I was about to give up on my site, Tim agreed to take over my email account. I gave him the password for my email and for the site. I simply said on the email page to include the word "private" somewhere in the subject line and hotmail would automatically redirect it to a folder only I read. Needless to say, I must have trusted him implicitly to do all this. That, and I desperately needed some help with my site at the time. I had no reason to doubt him, as he was married to the only female he supposedly was ever attracted to and they had a son together. He had a good job, although he was online at work too much. He seemed patient and bluntly honest and not at all like the man I'd later come to know...

After "Breathe" came Joey. Now, while Tim was the one to introduce "Breathe" to me, he was very skeptical toward Joey. It wasn't until I saw his jealousy of Joey that I began to see another side of him. You see, he wanted to be more than a protective father. He wanted me to love him back. He's always been attracted to teenage males, but he's also very much against the idea of adult-teenage relationships. he justifies all the stories he's written about two 13 or 14 year old boys falling in love by saying that they're the same age. It's self-hatred and envy. When I began spending a lot less time online, as I had Joey in real life, I all but left my site and the internet to him, but I couldn't stay away...

When I returned, the people I had known online were either gone, depressed, or mad at me. Tim, however, was strangely distant. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't begin to suspect that the man I had trusted was about to betray me...

At this time, he introduced Joey and I to someone online named after one of the characters in one of his stories. I trusted his intentions in doing this, but, as I began talking with this person (I think he was posing as 14 or so), this person began pretending that he was multiple people. I asked him what was going on, but then another screen name appeared (this was on AOL). I'll call this person Tim's friend. So, Tim's friend introduced himself, saying that I "triggered" the first person. however, after talking with Tim's friend, it became clear that he was the one playing the first person and all his other personalities all along. Now, I don't have any experience dealing with multiple personality disorder (if it was really uncontrolled), but I asked to speak to the first person and tried to console that side of Tim's friend. It was rather strange, because he didn't change back to the first screen name, but simply "popped in" another personality, just as he had done as the other person in the first screen name. Also, his words and typing began to resemble that of talking to a two year old. In the end, Tim's friend said "he's angry" and I later discovered that he meant Tim was angry (as though the two were psychically connected at every moment).

Later, Tim emailed me, saying that the first person was Tim's creation, not that of Tim's friend. and that Tim's friend was only playing him for his sake. I was confused, to say the least. He then took on more anger than I'd ever seen in him, even in his jealousy. he posted threatening messages in my guestbook along with the help of his friend. His friend wrote about dragons and other abstract things. Tim was the clearest, warning about the danger in ever caring deeply for me. It became so bad that I had to close my guestbook, as he was even emailing people from there, "warning" them. I changed the password for my email account and the site, trying to keep things together and I suspect it was Tim who eventually led to my site being taken off Geocities. The strangest part was that he expected me to attack him back and post messages in his guestbook. He even told his "friends" (from his message board) that some evil person was planning an attack against him for no good reason. I guess if he could go that insane, he figured the same could happen to me. Of course, I simply learned a lot of valuable lessons. This was around the time I wrote about The Real Danger of the Internet. To this day, I don't chat with anyone besides Joey. Screen names exist out there that were once used to impersonate me. If someone online says he's me in some program like AIM, Messenger, etc., it's not me. Those days have been over for years...

I've thought about why an over controlling man who has such a blessed life yet despises it would go so insane over me. I think that he wanted me to somehow fall for that imaginary person he introduced me to. Of course, why use someone with a personality complex? Needless to say, Tim's friend made up an imaginary love for himself. I assume the other personality would have found someone too if I fell for him and I would feel what Tim had felt with Joey. I know Tim wanted me to feel what he had felt, but, between his friend's sloppiness and Joey's ability to recognize those things, his plot was foiled and he was angry. Not only was he hurt, but all the hatred already inside of himself came out as anger against me and especially against Joey, who he blamed the most for the fiasco.

As far as Tim's friend, he spent nearly 24 hours a day, every day, online. I'm not sure if he was hooked to a computer or just in a wheel chair or what, but maybe things are different now. Even when they aren't who you think they are, you learn a lot about people through the internet. They often reveal a side of themselves they keep from everyone in real life. Have I learned never to trust anyone? No. I've learned simply to be more careful. People aren't all good or bad. They're a mix and you have to accept the bad with the good, just like in life. If there were no bad, good wouldn't seem so good. It would be ordinary and we'd crave the bad just for some change. In pain, moreso than in joy, there is learning and wisdom to be gained. There is love and there is... loss.