I am not sure how to write this, as I can sort of imagine how the words would sound to others, but I am curious as to whether anyone else out there has had a similar experience.

In various parts of my site, I have in the past spoken about the feeling that someone had hacked into my computer. I wasn't very specific about the ways in which I thought I was carrying on conversations with this 'person'.

What I wonder is if anyone else engages in mp3 'conversations'. I have at times spent hours, or even all night engaged in such conversations. I choose a song, then the 'other' chooses one, and so it goes until I stop. I have sometimes done this for a few months or weeks, and then made a conscious effort to stop. I have now avoided such behaviour since July (?) I think. I know how that sounds, and yet I have been unable to rid myself of the impression that I have at times been communicating with an actual human consciousness other than my own.

I have over 1700 songs on my playlist. When I participated in these conversations, I would set it on random shuffle. I first started to notice something unusual while I was listening to music on random play while I wrote or worked on something or other. It seemed like I was getting 'responses' to what I was writing or creating. Eventually, I started to join in the musical conversation as I wrote of above. Between choosing songs, writing and creating images and performing other computer activities, I started to feel that a common language was being created between me and this other consciousness.

It doesn't make sense to me. It can occur whether I'm online or off. I can't figure out any reason that any person would be spying on me, and in fact it makes more sense that I am so lonely and isolated that I need to create some kind of scenario to make myself feel more important. I am not aware of any technology that would make it possible. And although I can imagine GK might be someone that would be spied on, and perhaps through him, me, the whole thing still doesn't really make sense to me, and what I have had to accept is that I have through my isolation probably lost touch with reality. If you look at my online presence, I get no responses to my blog, I have no 'friends' in my friends section, I continue to express myself in ways that perhaps show I am out of touch with life, the world, people.

Mp3 communication has been for me significantly more than a fun way to pass time. While it's true that it may be one of the most fun things I have ever done, I really have trouble seeing it as a game, or as something totally created in my own mind. It felt to me as if it were a relationship as significant as any of the other significant relationships in my life. As I was getting to know the other person, I eventually realized that as with many relationships, there is a certain point beyond which the other is not comfortable progressing, or that it only made sense for it to be what it was considering who each of us were individually. However, because of the weird nature of the setup, I also wondered if I was approaching it completely differently. My usual, boring, sincere kind of way, trying to see if there was some kind of genuine friendship, when to the other it may have been more game-oriented fun.

In 'real life', when a relationship is over or reaches a stalemate, you can break up and move on. You get more of your time and privacy back. What I realized was that when I wanted to break up, I was not allowed to have my privacy. My website and computer are my main outlets for coping. I am very isolated, cut off from the world, and the 'other' would not allow me my space. If you can imagine that someone you have communicated intimately with, enough to realize that you are looking for different things, enough to decide that you are no longer comfortable sharing intimate things.. and imagine that you try to move on, and that person is still right there, looking at all your thoughts, your every move, everything you try to create or express as you try to cope with the end of a significant relationship, and with your ongoing depression and unresolved problems.

And there is no one you can talk to about this situation, because it sounds crazy. There is no way to 'prove' anything. And most people would probably say well if you can see it's probably all in your head, what's the big deal? And if it's fun to play sometimes, why don't you?

And I don't know how to explain that the whole thing felt so real to me that I can't just pretend that I can accept it was all in my head. And I can't go back to a 'relationship' that I felt I needed to move past. I suppose if I got drunk and did what drunk people do and contact people from their pasts, this is the behaviour I'd most likely go back to, rather than email, write or call anyone else. But it would be in my mind like a kind of self-loathing 'slip' that people tend to regret after they allow themselves to do it.

I have talked to a couple of people about this, but because nothing can be proven, and because it all sounds so whacked, nothing much has come of trying to talk about it. Because this issue has not been resolved for me, I am even more strange than I was before when it comes to communicating with anyone. I am stressed, suspicious, always trying to stay open to as many possibilities as possible, always reading much more than needed into simple comments, and always trying to communicate on as many levels as possible.

The idea that there are phenomena in the world that we can't currently measure or identify according to our limited ideas of what is possible - I definitely think there is a lot more going on that we can currently perceive or measure. One person brought up an unusual idea to fit what I was experiencing, and I saw some similarities, and tried to be open to it, but in the end, I still had the unshakeable feeling that I was communicating with another human consciousness, or a group of others, also human.

At times I have thought that the only way to rid myself of this feeling was to give up the computer completely. What I did was that within my lack of privacy, I tried to create my own space. I managed to continue to create entries for my site that were real to me. To write up this entry, it's part of the same process. It is not easy. I think that it takes a kind of courage.

I wanted to be open to unusual communication, and what I experienced was definitely unusual.

I wonder if it is some kind of statement about my life: those with more power and resources withhold the information I need in order to grow and develop, so that they can hold on to control. Everybody knows that it's me or you.

Which brings me to my family, and the feeling that I need to make a statement. It is becoming more and more evident to me that possibly many generations on both sides had members who suffered extreme depression and isolation, and self-esteem issues.

I vaguely remember a quote from a Sex and the City episode, something like: the thing with families is that if no one is sorry to see you go, you're probably not coming back.

I think the members of my biological family are decent people, but that I am a mutant. Our lives have taken us on different paths, and it is very much like I died within this lifetime and was reincarnated as something else, as different as if I had been born in a different era or into a completely different family. That kind of thing does not happen in a simple way, it is a result of years of small differences and 'choices' that multiply exponentially.

I think my problems were too huge, and in the face of those problems the members of my family did what was possible for them to do, and then didn't know what to do when I didn't improve.

When it comes to getting help, or going for therapy, is there an unspoken rule. At least it seems like I never heard the words said outright, I just sort of felt them underneath. You have to have some kind of spark inside you that wants to live, and from there you have to make whatever compromises necessary, you have to grab on to the framework of life.

But if that spark is gone, there is nothing anyone can do.

People don't tend to express compassion regarding that state, though. It tends to disgust them. It's difficult for me to be aware of that.

I don't seem to have accomplished much this year. I am still going in circles. I thought that maybe it would be a fallow year. Still, it is strange how little projects pop up and take my energy. At least from time to time.

I can't deny that I need answers regarding what the hell this hacking paranoia is about, but from what I have seen, I am not in a position to acquire further knowledge, I am not resourceful enough to work it out. I have written it out here, but the words fall flat and don't really convey the experience. I could describe the situation in more detail if I had someone with similar experience to discuss it with, I think. Or if I was asked questions.

Whether my experience has been all in my head or not, I would like to suggest that interactive mp3 conversation might be a fun thing for people to set up and try for themselves with those they know, or with someone they want to get to know better. For all I know, this is actually something that people do now.

[I have used this image elsewhere in a different context. I have decided to put it here because I like the image and didn't want to have it hidden away on an obscure part of my site, and partly because I think it expresses some aspects of my confusion, and how some parts of the 'other's' personality come across to me. However, the best way to look at this image is probably that it is yet another self-portrait - I am projecting my own internal issues onto the image I create. My paranoia interferes with my ability to see others, and it warps all of my interactions with others.]