6-16-2001 | 3:30 a.m.

I don't know where to start. And I am trying to be as coherent as possible. When I am ready I will share some of what has gone on in the past few months. I will say that I had regained computer/internet usage a few weeks ago. I haven't even checked my web based email addresses as of yet. But I couldn't even look at diaryland. I just wasn't ready. Maybe I'm ashamed of the wrong choices I've made. And to try and rebuild some sort of life I had to deal with certain issues first. Health, family, trust.

But when I finally did go online I was beyond disturbed. Because someone posted on my message board that I was dead. And it was supposedly someone living close by. There is someone I suspect, but it isn't right to address it now. Not only did someone claim I was dead, but my virtue.nu account seems to have been deleted. I get no response from them and when I try to login I get a message stating that the account does not exist. All of my images were stored there. But the fact that the images were gone was not the problem. Did someone keep guessing at my password until they found the right one? And then did someone delete my account? Plus pieces of my diary seem to be missing. Did someone mess with my dland account?

There is a situation that makes all of this scare me more. A few years ago I moved from the town I had lived most of my life in. My unstable ex had lost his job and so we lost our apartment. He convinced me that moving upstate a few hours (in the same area my Mom had just moved) was the solution. Less expensive living and job offers. He gave me less than 2 days to pack all of my belongings and leave. Everything that had been my life. There were many people I didn't contact when I left. I needed to break some ties and I took a cowardly way out - complete breaks of communication. About 6 or 7 months after the move I received a call from one of these 'friends' who had tracked down my Mom. She gave my number to him, without my knowledge. I'll call this person "B" for now. He was shocked to hear my voice. I was told that there were various rumors being spread in my old hometown, two of which were:

- I was dead
- I had cancer and was dying

"B" would not tell me where he'd heard any of this from - only that many people were approaching him with these stories. I was horrified. The place I grew up in. The place I called 'home' and felt safe. People I trusted. They had me dead and buried. Revenge? I really don't know. I've done many things I regret. Did I deserve this? I never found out who was responsible for these rumors. The chill. The shock. At that point I became fixated on death. I avoided situations that I felt could put me in danger. I started to believe that I had some strange illness and was dying. Paranoia. I still can't shake it.

And now I've been claimed dead again. Possibly from someone I've pissed off since moving here. Or maybe someone I don't know at all. And the more I see the worse I feel. People are starting to think that this diary has been a fake. That I don't exist. That the experiences I shared here are false. Well, let me tell you - I'd love for it to all be untrue. I wish I could be someone else. I'm me though. And maybe someday I can say that these experiences have made me stronger. But right now it sucks.

I appreciate the concern of people who read my diary. And I truly am sorry to leave the diary hangin' on a bad note. I didn't really have a choice.

But I can say that I'm trying to make changes. I haven't had a drink in a few months. I am still taking Xanax as it is the only thing that allows me sleep. But only at night. I don't walk around in a stupor all day. I will be spending the summer with my younger siblings. I have reapplied at the college I had been attending. I have been accepted and will resume classes in the fall. Only 2 or 3 classes at first. I need to take things slow for now.

I am real. I am me. "CordeliaMeg" is my screen name, yes. Do all of you post your real names? My true full name is something I don't like to share with many. Although I will say that Meg is my middle name. The pictures I had posted here were really of me. Cmon, wouldn't I use photos of someone pretty if I was posting fakes? I am flawed. But I am real. No portion of this diary is fiction. That may be hard to believe, but then I'm not asking you to. I started writing as a release. I made friends in the Diaryland community, but I did not write for them. I took comfort in the fact that there were others relating to me. I didn't feel so alone. That just maybe I wasn't 'insane' after all.

If someone I know in the so-called 'real world' found this URL than so be it. But it does hurt that someone would gain access to my accounts and delete images/writings that I used to express myself. I had an online diary prior to Diaryland, hosted on crappy Angelfire. I didn't know if anyone read at first and it didn't matter. I wrote for me. Always for me.

I will write more when I feel comfortable in doing so. So far I haven't been able to find out what happened to my virtue.nu account. The images/backgrounds will be missing, but it was never really about graphics. A plain black background is fine with me. And as I have changed my dland password I don't expect tampering again. I hope.

I am writing this from a family members' computer, as mine is out of commission at the moment. If you've emailed me and I haven't responded I apologize. I'm just overwhelmed at the moment. I will try to respond to the message board comments soon. But I have to do it when I'm ready to do so.

I am not dead. And I am not a made-up character or the like.