Alright, enough of my depressing and dramatic bullshit. Let�s talk about something topical, shall we? A hoax was just uncovered on the internet. Well, not �just�, a day is like a week on this thing, everyone gets updated so quickly. Anyhow, in case you don�t already know what I�m talking about, there�s some sick, demented, and deeply disturbed woman and mother who spent the last 2 years pretending to be a 19-year-old girl dying of cancer. Some of my very close friends became close with this invented person through phone conversations and communication online. TWO YEARS worth of writing, sharing, teaching, loving, gaining trust and love, touching people in many ways, helping us all to realize our own mortality.

And last week or so, this �girl� died. After a bit of research from some skeptics in the span of a few days, all the facts came out, and her whole life and death proved to be the fabrication of some middle-America mother. There are so many feelings involved in this. It�s like falling in love with a man and then finding out he�s been leading a secret life all along. You question everything, everyone around you, all that you know to be true, because the one thing that was so innocent, so real, has been a lie all along. It had some good results. People were touched. Communities came together to mourn and to share the love of a dying girl who had such a great attitude towards life and death.

Now, it seems like everyone was part of some emotional experiment. Some artistic project, all becoming part of this woman�s imaginary character, getting involved in the �girl�s� life, BRINGING life into her by getting as involved as the way some did. I�ve never been one for establishing relationships with people online, people I don�t know in person. Physical presence can be so different from reading someone�s words. Yes, I connect, yes, I laugh and cry at stories and shared experiences. But I never really cared about a faceless screen name. A voiceless instant message. My friends did, though. They cared. They still do. My good friend, Halcyon cared. A LOT. He�s someone who is known for not just disliking, but abhorring lies, detesting deceit. When I found out that this was a hoax, it was his faith in the world that I feared for most. But apparently, he has overcome this lie, this deceit, taken the good that was had from it and moving on, heart first, as always.

Thank God for that. Because if this DID destroy my friends, despite my detachment to the �girl� from the beginning, because I never did know her or speak with her or communicate with her online, if it did destroy just an iota of faith or vulnerable love within even one of them, then I would have to drive to wherever the hell this Disturbed Debbie lives and smartly bitch-slap her.

Bad Girl! Bad! What the fuck is the matter with you! You want to be a character? Write a book. Don�t invite living and feeling people into your altered reality under false pretenses. I hope there�s some way to punish you. Yes, you touched people and they learned and they felt and they smiled and they wept. And they mourned. And then, they found out that all of their feeling was based on a lie. Some of them are fine with that, feeling is feeling, and having felt it is what matters most. But others, they are stunned. Now they question their feelings and their beliefs and their trust. And you, Disturbed Debbie, and your careless deceit, is the cause of all of it. If this was in the forum of a novel, it might have been respected, acclaimed, loved as much as this Kaycee was.

But by making it real, you have stripped it of everything, because, like oil, nothing holds together that is based on a lie. People have some really fucked up ways of looking at right and wrong, consequences and ramifications. They really do. As for me, I allowed this to jade me. Every weblog could be fiction. How do I know that anyone (aside from those who know me in person) believes the things that I write? Thinks that I am real? It�s a good thing I don�t care. And I�ll put that in my book.

-Barbarella

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