Cyber-Magnetism, Part IV

As I saw, “MattM900 is typing” at the bottom of my message window, a thousand possibilities ran through my overworked and underfed mind. Who was this person, and how did he know me? More importantly, what was so important that I needed to be sitting down?

MattM900: Frecklehead, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you have a right to know. And I ask that you please just trust me and listen to what I have to say…
Cosette86: Okay….

My heart was pounding. As a woman of deep feeling and passions, I have often in my life been able to just feel when something terrible is about to happen. This was one of those times.

MattM900: FiremanG is one of five or six aliases for the person you have been talking to. The person you have been talking to does not exist.

My heart stopped pounding. I knew this was possible, because I myself had several aliases under my main screen name. Sometimes, when I didn’t want to be bothered, I would use the one with the profile that said I was married with kids.

Cosette86: What do you mean? How do you know?
MattM900: This very same thing happened to my friend Michelle. She lives in Florida, and, if for any reason you don’t believe me, I invite you to call her up. I’ve already told her that I found out what this person was up to again, and she wanted to know what happened when I told you.
Cosette86: Whoa, slow down…what do you mean it happened to her? Is Greg talking to this Michelle person too?
MattM900: That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There is no Greg. There is, however, someone named Jenna who has several screen names set up that she uses to manipulate people, get money sent to her from them, and basically just fuck with their minds.

This was unreal. All this time, I had supposedly been lied to and tricked…that I could possibly deal with. But…by a girl? I could hardly breathe.

Cosette86: You’re lying. What’s Michelle’s phone number, I’m calling her.
MattM900: I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. But I’ll give you her phone number, she’s expecting a call from you.

I got the number from Matt, and without even thinking twice, I picked up my cell phone and called this stranger, ignoring the fact that it was after midnight in Florida. Michelle answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”
“Michelle?”
“Yes…who’s this?”
“I live in Texas and your friend Matt just found me online and started telling me things about the guy I’ve been talking to online for two months.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. All I could hear was Michelle’s breathing and the television in the background. Finally she spoke, very quietly.

“I thought you might call tonight. He said he was going to tell you. I know this is hard for you to comprehend right now.”
“You bet your ass it is! What the hell is going on? How do I know you’re not lying to me, both of you?”
“Listen, then. Did this “Greg” tell you about his roommates, and that he has a black lab named Daisy?”
“Yes, but…”
“Did he tell you stories about his mother being killed and that he had an ex-girlfriend who cheated on him?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Listen…did you try to send him mail but it was always returned? Did you ever once talk to him on the phone?”

My head was spinning as I listened to her recount to me everything Greg had ever told me. I paced my bedroom floor, trying to make sense of all that I was hearing. Michelle told me about how she had met a guy online named Brett, and the same exact situation had occurred. Brett told her sob stories about how he had to live with a family in Colorado because he couldn’t pay rent. Michelle offered to help him with money, and he gave her the address of a girl named Jenna, who he was apparently staying with. He would never call her on the phone, never agree to talk to her. When he finally got his new apartment, or so he said, all the mail Michelle tried to send him came back to her.

She told me that her long-time friend Matt, the very Matt who had contacted me this night, had finally gotten fed up and had used his computer skills and “Brett’s” screen name to hack into his account. He discovered that the primary account belonged to a girl named Jenna, and she lived in Colorado.

After breaking Michelle’s heart by giving her the news, he and Michelle continued to check on Jenna’s account over the next several months. One night, he saw a new screen name under her account: FiremanG. By using skills that I’ve only heard about hackers using, Matt discovered emails from Cosette86, saw that Jenna was up to the same thing, and contacted me immediately after discussing it with Michelle.

By this point I had stopped pacing. I was staring at my thin face and my dark-circled eyes in the mirror, hardly recognizing myself and scarcely breathing.

“Are you okay?”

I had forgotten that I was even on the phone.

“Yes…I mean, no of course not…I…why did he or she or whatever…?”

I couldn’t finish my sentence.

“Michelle I have to go. Thank you for telling me. And thank Matt…I gotta go.”
“Are you sure? Please don’t do anything stupid okay? Not tonight. I would suggest not being alone tonight, if I recall how I felt when I found out..”
“No, I’m fine…thanks. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and dropped it onto my bed. I walked in circles around my room for about fifteen minutes. My chest felt so tight that I thought it might explode. Millions of thoughts were running through my head, bubbling up like lava in a volcano…I prayed to God that it would erupt but I didn’t know what it would do to me when it did.

I picked up my phone again and walked outside. I called my friend Amber. Of course she was asleep so I left her a broken message. I called Michael. Another message, trying to sound light-hearted. I called and called, trying to find someone who would share this pain with me. But every time a voicemail picked up instead, I was grateful because I was so humiliated. I felt like they would laugh at me for being so stupid, so foolish…and they would’ve been right.

Suddenly I felt panicked. I wanted to scream, to pick up anything I could find in the driveway and throw it at the cars lining the street. I wanted to break things, I wanted to run, I wanted to die. I ran back inside and scribbled a note to my dad and stepmom, telling them I was leaving for the night.

Against the advice of Michelle, I got in my car and started driving. I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I couldn’t be alone in that house with just my thoughts. Before long I found myself at my mom’s house. I let myself in with my key and hurriedly petted the dog so he wouldn’t bark and wake up the whole family.

I tiptoed over to my brother’s room and opened the door, hoping he didn’t have his girlfriend in there with him. I got into bed next to him and nudged him, trying not to scare him.

“Hey sis, what are you doing here? Are you okay?” He asked me sleepily.
“No, I’m not. Greg’s not real.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll tell you about it later, I just couldn’t be alone tonight.”
“Okay.”

He was asleep again in seconds. I, however, did not close my eyes the entire night. Around 8:00am, I got up and quietly got out of bed, so as not to wake up Derek. I snuck out of the house and got back in my car. I was scheduled to work that day, so I went back home and showered, put on my uniform, and tried to make myself look presentable. My hands and legs were shaking so badly that I could hardly put on my makeup. I figured working all day might help me to NOT think about it so much. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

As soon as I got to work and sat down for the pre-shift meeting, my friend Brady took one look at me, and his expression showed that I must have looked absolutely horrible.

“Oh my god, what happened?”

The volcano erupted. Within seconds of Brady’s innocent, caring question, I was sobbing, crying harder than I ever have in my entire life. This would actually be more akin to wailing, weeping…any of the most extreme expressions of emotions one can imagine. This was not the crying of the quietly shocked and heartbroken. This was the crying of a person who has been run through the ringer and has finally experienced emotions so strong that her body can’t take it anymore.

Brady looked horrified that he had caused this, and pulled me away from the bewildered looks of my coworkers. He called the General Manager over and just gestured toward me, silently. He didn’t need to say anything; it was more than obvious that I was a complete wreck.

The GM sat down and took my hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked me quietly. “What happened?”

How could I put it into words? How could I even begin to talk about these feelings?

“It was a lie, it was a lie, I’m so stupid, I’m SO stupid, how could he…” I said these things over and over.

Brady and the GM looked at each other while I continued to completely melt down in front of them.

“You should go home. You need to be at home right now. Do you need someone to drive you?”

I shook my head and got up and walked out of the restaurant. I had two messages on my cell phone, one from Amber and one from Anna. The one from Amber only increased my tears.

“Oh my god…oh my sweet friend, how could someone do this to you? I love you so much and I’m praying for you. Call me whenever…oh God I wish I’d been awake when you called…”

The one from Anna was in typical, no-nonsense Anna fashion.

“You had better not be at work. Stay home. Sleep. I’m coming over at 6:00pm to get you.”

I did go home. I walked past my stunned parents and went to bed. I slept. Dreamlessly, by the grace of God. Six hours later, I woke up. Anna was there. I didn’t even bother to shower or fix myself up, but I knew she wouldn’t mind. She took me to the Cheesecake Factory and listened as I told the story. She held my hand and stared me right in the eye.

“You are not stupid. This person is a psycho. Don’t you dare feel ashamed.”

On the way home, we listened to the Aida Broadway cast recording, and when this song came on, it seemed to verbalize the very things I couldn’t say.

How did I come to this?
How did I slip and fall?
How did I throw half a lifetime away
Without any thought at all?

This should have been my time
It's over, it never began
I closed my eyes to so much for so long
and I no longer can

I try to blame it on fortune
Some kind of shift in a star
But I know the truth and it haunts me
it's flown just a little too far
I know the truth and it mocks me
I know the truth and it shocks me
It's flown just a little too far.

Why do I want him still?
Why when there's nothing there?
How to go on with the rest of my life
To pretend I don't care
This should've been my time
It's over-It never began
I closed my eyes to so much for so long
and I no longer can

I try to blame it on fortune
Some kind of twist in my fate
But I know the truth and it haunts me
I learned it a little too late

Oh I know the truth and it mocks me
I know the truth and it shocks me
I learned it a little too late.

We drove home that night and Anna was respectfully silent, leaving me to my own thoughts. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got home, or the next day, or ever again. I can’t, even to this day, begin to describe how my heart felt.

Even now, whenever I have to reinstall my instant messenger, the first thing I do is go in and change the default sounds. Even hearing them now brings back remnants of those feelings.

One day I will forgive this person…or at least I hope I can. I just pray, for now, that she never enters my path. I have no sympathy for any “sickness” of “psychosis” this person may suffer from. I just want her to hurt as much as I did.

I said there was a ray of hope at the end of this story, and I meant it. After this horrible, horrible day, Michael and I started to hang out a lot more in a friendship setting. How we became the loving, wonderful couple that we are now is another story for another day. All I know is, there is a reason for everything. And, perhaps this terrible thing happened in my life as a way for Michael and I to get closer.

Just please, take something away from this story. It’s a sick and crazy world out there…please be careful with your heart. I’m very lucky that my heart was the only thing that suffered from this.

~Frecklehead