Because I have a sense of justice....
I had to think long and hard about whether or not I was going to do this. I almost got into a car accident this morning because I was thinking about it and not paying attention to the road. I have this weird obsession with truthfulness. I want people to know the whole truth, I want people to understand things completely and make their judgements based on understanding.

Am I doing this out of personal reasons? Perhaps, but I believe my feelings are justifiable, given what I've gone through. The way Rhyein treated me when she found out I had "gone against her" - I had failed to believe her when she was lying - was really the very last straw for me. I don't have her exact quote here, but I believe it was along the lines of "some friend you are."

Some friend I am? Did I lie to everyone I knew for years? Did I expect people to stand by me and my stubborn declarations in the face of common sense and evidence?

If this is cruel, I'm sorry, but it must be said. Rhyein, your apology did not "come clean," as you would like us to think, and I am almost completely sure that you're only sorry because you got caught.

Who am I to say this? Let me start at the very beginning.



My friend Angie introduced me to Rhyein, whom I knew as Joe, my freshman year of college. We bonded while playing Final Fantasy 8, when I cried at the ending and hugged her. And we got along well, we both liked to write and we liked fantasy stories. She told me she got her nickname "Joe" from her best friend who was from Cleveland, I believe, who went to NYU. His name was also Joe, but I'll call him Flash to keep the two seperate. This was around the end of 2000/beginning of 2001.

Flash was the youngest child of aging parents, and his siblings were much older than he was. I don't remember all the details, so I'll try to keep to the things I did know about him. He was extremely smart, and symbolic to his parents of their hope in their new country (they had emigrated from Portugal, I believe). I was a little skeptical of his ability to speak 10 languages, but I knew people like that existed, so I didn't think to question it. Looking back now, I know I never saw a photograph of him, but I never asked to see one. It seemed quite plausible. My friends who knew her before I did said that she claimed he was the real-life nephew of Joe Perry, but I never heard her make that claim, so I will set it aside.

Rhyein discovered a message board, and the seduction of the internet, and the friendship between those who had introduced her to me and Rhyein herself started to go downhill. Rhyein never apologized--she said it was just the way she was. She always had to win an argument and would never admit she was wrong. By the end of that school year, my friends who knew her wanted nothing to do with her.

I will be the first to admit that I am severely lacking in vertebrae. I had even less backbone at the time than I do now, and I felt sorry for Rhyein. I saw her as someone who was hurting, and I had fun writing with her and occasionally drawing pictures of the characters in the novel she was working on. I thought I could show her that she was being selfish sometimes, and save the failing relationship between her and my other friends.

And Rhyein respected me. I said I was kinda like a Sana-chan to her Hayama, for those of you who have seen Kodocha. (If not, it's a story of how a rather cheerful, popular girl befriends a social outcast.) I tried all I could to be nice to her, and kept drawing her pictures and helping with her writing.

That summer, I talked to Rhyein online and she sounded very depressed. I was seriously afraid that she was going to commit suicide. She didn't want to talk to me, but I was so worried that I drove two hours to see her. This was at a time when I had never driven that far on my own, I had to convince my parents to let me do it.

When I got there, she didn't seem to be suffering. In hindsight...I don't know what I should have done.

It wasn't the first time I worried myself sick over her. When things were particularly ugly between my friends, and the situation was exacerabated when Rhyein antagonized my boyfriend (something that I take partial blame for), I was desperate to make peace and when I couldn't, it grated on me. I would become physically sick over the situation, leading to panic attacks and nights when I couldn't sleep, I just shook and occasionally vomited.

I believe that summer is when Flash appeared on the message boards. I don't know for sure, because at this point I was no longer participating on the board.

When we came back to school that fall, there was a sort of uneasy truce. My friends just avoided Rhyein, although we lived in the same hallway. I would still go down to her room to visit her, and sit on her floor and draw while she sat in front of the computer. Always in front of the computer. I believe that some of that time she told me she was talking to Flash. I never actually talked to "Flash," but that was more just because I didn't participate in the message board anymore, not because I had any doubts of his existence.

Now we come to Sept 11. I found out during my Japanese class what had happened, and I was just as horrified as everyone else. I knew a friend of my boyfriend went to NYU, and I was a bit worried about him, and then Rhyein told me that Flash lived only two blocks from the Towers--and she was afraid he had gone to help, but she didn't know for sure.

That night we went to a local restaurant with a bunch of people from the theater fraternity-group, Theta. I was worried for Flash, too...I didn't realize that the trajedy had struck that close to me. I told her he was probably fine, and she was still really upset--as I would expect someone to be if their friend was that close to the trajedy. And she started composing a letter to him on a napkin.

The next morning I walked by her on campus. "I talked to his mother," she told me. "He's dead."

She sounded like someone in shock. I was in shock. I wanted to do anything I could to help her get through this. I was horrified. I knew that he'd just had his birthday, and it really made the trajedy hit home for me. That was just one person seperated from me-god, it was scary.

I invited her to come up to my house that weekend. I thought it would be good to get her mind off of it, and she was friends with my sister too, who was still in high school at the time. We went to the mall and hung out, but I was never able to get rid of the sick feeling in my stomach. I think I did remember feeling ironic at the time that I was feeling worse over this than she was, but she'd always been a more stoic person than I was. I figured she was hurting a lot on the inside. When I get upset, I cry a lot and tend to throw up, but I know not everyone is like that.

After that, for a while, just thinking of Rhyein would make me sick. Or maybe before that. It had to do with all the emotional baggage, between the split between her and my other friends, and her inevitable connection with what happened Sept. 11. After the death of Flash, though, she said I was her best friend on one occasion...and I could get away with criticizing her. When I found a box of cigarrettes in her desk, I slapped her face. And our friendship, if you can call it that, survived.

I just got more and more upset over things. I had to avoid her for a while for my own peace of mind, and around this time my parents decided I needed to talk to a psychologist.

I went to see the same psychologist my mother saw when she had a nervous breakdown when I was little. Dr. Pritscher told me, basically, I couldn't fix everyone's problems and trying was just going to hurt me. My psychiatrist also increased my dose of paxil that he'd prescribed for my anxiety. I was able to breathe a little easier after that. I pretty much only dealt with Rhyein online, and to tell the truth, she's a lot easier to deal with online.

I hope this puts things into some sort of perspective.

I just can't stand to see her saying something in her livejournal, claiming it is "the absolute truth" when it really isn't. And you can take my words for what you like, but I can never trust her again, and I find it hard to expect an apology from someone who kept lying until she was forced into a corner and blurted out whatever she could to try to save a shred of integrity.

Maybe it is cruel of me to air all this, but I've been through too much for this girl, and I have nothing to show for it but pain. I don't want her to use more people like she used me. And I let myself be taken advantage of, I know that. But it still shouldn't happen.