UnLocked

Kate messaged me randomly on AIM sometime in 2006. In our first conversation she told me that I had “just appeared” on her buddy list. She wasn’t sure how – maybe she had added me in the past and just didn’t notice. I suggested that maybe she had seen me on Open Diary, where my AIM name was available at the time. She told me that she didn’t think that was the case, but revealed that she also did happen to have an Open Diary.

So our friendship started with a lie.

She has written on here with more names than I can remember. Most recently she has been dekcol, locked007, locked, whisper., and Silenced Rain. I have no idea how much of what she writes in her diary is true. Perhaps none of it is, perhaps all of it is. However, I do know that she is not this person:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me1oykz6Xh1qar5s6o1_r1_500.jpg

One of the people in that picture is Heather Morris, one of the stars of the TV show Glee. The brunette girl next to her is Carly Anderson, who Kate has represented herself to me since those first messages in 2006. To be fair, she has not sent me pictures at all since early 2008 – the same week that she proposed a trip backpacking Europe with me. A trip I’m convinced she had to know would never happen.

Of course, she’s since stated to me that she hasn’t used any of these pictures in years, which is probably true. I have no idea what is true about her – all I really know is that she isn’t Carly Anderson.

Kate and I have talked very little over the past 3-4 years, partially because of my wariness of her (and, I expect, because of her wariness of me discovering her). In fact, we talked more extensively than we have in years after I posted an entry two days ago wondering if she was a “catfish” (fake online person). For the next 24 hours Kate explained herself to me (via text), without ever really revealing anything. She was first understanding of why I was suspicious of her, but when I began to suggest ways that she could prove herself she became defensive and found it quite ludicrous that I was attacking her now. She refused to “jump through hoops” for me and explained she couldn’t skype because she was afraid someone would hack her webcam. She implied that she had better things to spend her time on, although our conversation lasted far longer than it would have taken her to snap a picture proving who she was.

Then that night I found the pictures of Carly Anderson by performing a google image search on all of Kate’s pictures (for those unaware of the technology, you can actually search the internet WITH a picture and it will tell you if it finds the picture anywhere else online). Via text, I let Kate know that I knew the truth. She apologized and said there was no excuse for her actions.

The strange thing is that, even though I so strongly suspected that Kate was not who she presented herself as, I still was completely numb when I actually found her picture. I don’t know how to explain how flabbergasting it is to realize that someone you felt real emotions towards isn’t real. It’s just very dizzying to my brain. Just having thoughts such as “Kate is the type of person who is very determined” suddenly don’t make sense. What type of person can “Kate” be if Kate wasn’t real? How could I have been so stupid for so long? I’d actually like to devote an entire entry to just my stupidity, but now isn’t the place for that.

Granted, it was also quite a triumph to discover the photos – I have been frustrated for years now over the fact that I would never know the truth about Kate. I still do not know the truth, but I know that Kate’s version of it is false.

I wasn’t sure at first if I should write this entry. I actually feel somewhat guilty writing it still, because despite the insanity of everything I still feel some sort of attachment to Kate and I know that she will be devastated at me posting this. But, anyway, tonight I gave Kate one last call, which she (to my surprise) answered.

I asked her why she did it and she said she didn’t know. She denied that she has ever misrepresented anything in her life other than the picture she represented herself with (which she denied until I caught her) and that she had not given me her real name. I suppose I still can’t prove she isn’t being truthful. But, for me, it just stretches credulity too much to think that Kate was telling the truth about every single thing except for, of course, the one thing I was able to prove was a lie.

The most heartbreaking part of our last conversation though was that, as we talked, I realized the reason she spent all day yesterday defending herself to me and then accepted speaking to me on the phone didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. No, Kate wanted to talk to me because she wanted to convince me to keep this all a secret. That’s where I kept finding the conversation steering – away from our friendship and back to how it really seemed unnecessary to post this for everyone to see.

It’s still a blow to my ego (though an expected one) that protecting her OD came across as more of a priority to her than what she had done to me. Of course, she assured me that everything that is in her current diary is true. Just as she assured me that she had misrepresented basically nothing in all the time that I’ve known her other than her picture. And that’s really only because she’s such a private person. I did suggest to her that next time she might just say that she is private and would not like to share a picture and it would save a lot of heartache.</

span>

One of the few things we agreed on in the conversation is that there is no way that I can know the truth now anyway. No matter what she says, I will be stuck questioning it. Once a person establishes that they can lie about their whole identity, it’s tough to give them much benefit of the doubt. She could have admitted that everything she ever told me was a lie and that she also created the diaries of Michael and Emerson and I probably still wouldn’t have believed her. So the fact that she admitted nothing doesn’t really prove anything anymore than if she had admitted something. So, there is nothing to say for sure what is real and what isn’t, just as there hasn’t been for the entire time I’ve known her. But as I said “Bye Kate” for the last time, I still couldn’t help but think that our relationship had just ended with more lies.