Sad Posts Say So Much

Granos posted:

This all takes place in February to April of 2004, when I was a Freshman in college. I have always been a fairly shy person, but I had a circle of friends from high school that I hung out with on a regular basis. Specifically, I had a best friend, John, who I hung out with almost every day. At that time, I commuted to my state University, which was about a half-hour drive from my house, and all of my friends were either seniors in high school or were living at home and attending the local community college. From the time I graduated high school to January of my Freshman year at college my life was pretty simple and relaxed. I spent a few hours a day on schoolwork, hung out with my friends, went to parties on the weekend, and in general had a good time. That was until, of course, I met Stephanie, and everything changed.

Stephanie was an acquaintance of a friend of John, who he met at a party that I did not attend. She was a Senior at another local high school, and lived about 15 minutes away from me. He got her number, and a few days later we went to her house to hang out. We hung out with her a few more times over the next couple weeks, and once it became apparent to John that she wasn't going to sleep with him, he lost most of his interest. I, however, did not. Stephanie was the most beautiful and amazing girl I have ever seen. From the first time I saw her I knew I was in "love". She was just so pretty, and so funny, and had the most adorable laugh and smile I had ever seen and heard.

I wished so badly that I had the social skills to become friends with her independent of John; I mean, I knew that she was way out of my league and I was never going to get anywhere with her, but maybe if I could just become friends with her something might happen, someday. However, I never got the opportunity. We were acquaintances, and she thought I was nice, but we never really became close enough friends that I would feel comfortable asking her to hang out by myself. So, once John decided that trying to get into her pants had become a futile endeavor, I was pretty much screwed. But I still just couldn't get her out of my head. I was infatuated with this girl, and when I get infatuated with a girl like this, it takes a lot of time and a lot of work to get over her. This time, however, I didn't want to get over her. I didn't want to get her out of my head only to become obsessed with some other girl two weeks later. Stephanie was perfect, and I had to do anything I could to stay close to her.

So, I started working on a plan, a plan that had but one challenge - I needed full access to her computer. Luck was on my side however, as she happened to be throwing a party at her house the next weekend, since her parents were out of town. I convinced John that we should go, and that Friday night, we show up at her house with my 32 MB USB Pen Drive in my pocket. Everyone is getting drunk, but I stayed sober, since I decided that I needed to be fully alert to pull this off. About two hours into the party, I sneak up into her room. Basically everyone is downstairs, except for someone who is puking in the upstairs bathroom. I insert my USB Drive into her computer, and install its contents. The program I installed, as you may have figured out, is a custom written Trojan horse - a backdoor, undetectable by any virus scanning programs, that will give me full access to her computer at all times. With that, I took out the USB Drive, went downstairs, got smashed, and left in the wee hours of the morning.

When I woke up at my house on Saturday afternoon, I immediately went on my computer to make sure everything was working properly, and boy was it. I had access to EVERYTHING. Every file on her computer, a complete log of every keystroke she's typed, every website she's visited, and every program she's opened. I spent the weekend writing little programs to make reading her IM conversations and email much easier, since my Trojan just sent all the data to me in a raw text format. Best of all, she had a digital camera that she carried everywhere with her, and she took pictures almost every time she went out with her friends, and uploaded them to her computer when she got back. It was just amazing… when you have total access to someone who you are so completely infatuated with… it is hard to explain, but it just makes you feel so powerful… It should be obvious, but just so everyone is clear, NO ONE else knew about any of this, not even John. After this, life basically continued on as normal, only with my new "hobby" taking up most of my spare time. I saw Stephanie only 3 times after the party, but I didn't really mind. When I saw her in real life, I always had to worry about saying something stupid, and I was always paranoid about what she was thinking about me. On the computer, I could just escape to another world, where I wouldn't have to worry about her judging me.

After about a month, I was starting to get a little bored with everything, and I felt like I needed something new to re-kindle my connection with Stephanie, and I knew what it was. She had a web cam near her computer, but it was facing backwards on one of her shelves, and wasn't even plugged in. So, one day, I was hanging out with John and we were bored, and I suggested to John that we go visit Stephanie, since we hadn't seen her in a long time. He was like "Sure, whatever," and he called her up and we drove over to her house. When we got there, I told her that I had forgotten about an online assignment that was due today, and that I needed to get on a computer right now. She told me that it was fine if I used hers, which of course was my plan all along. So I go upstairs to her room, find the web cam, plug it in, install the driver, and position in so that I can see as much of her room as possible, most importantly so that I can see her while she is on the computer and lying in bed. I then go back downstairs a leave a little while later, happy as a clam.

Two days later, I get back to my house at like 7 PM from school and dinner, and go to my computer to check up on Stephanie. However, something strange has happened, her computer is off. This is very peculiar, as she has never actually turned her computer off (although she rebooted it many times) as long as I've known her. I look in the logs, and see something that completely devastates me - I've been found out. Along with a normal virus scan, which came up empty, someone had downloaded run nmap and ethereal to see which ports were open and to sniff network traffic. Apparently she was so suspicious, most likely from the web cam, that she got someone who was very computer savvy to manually scan her computer for Trojans. At this point I was scared shitless. It couldn't be linked to me for certain, because none of the data from her computer was sent directly to me, as it was all routed through another trojaned box somewhere else first. However, she must have known that I set up the web cam, and it doesn't take a rocket scientists to put two-and-two together. So, I called John to see if she said anything to him. As soon as he answers I can tell he's very upset. I still remember the exact wording of the following conversations.

"What the fuck dude. What the fuck"

"What are you talking about?"

"Look you motherfucker… Jesus Christ, you know, I have ALWAYS stood up for you. NONE of my friends like you, they all think that you are a creepy, annoying asshole, but I ALWAYS said 'No, he's a really cool guy if you get to know him'. I always let you tag along to wherever I was going. But you know what, they were right. You're a fucking psycho, and a fucking stalker, and the creepiest motherfucker I've ever met. Don't ever fucking talk to me again, don't ever fucking try to hang out with me again… and believe me when I say this to you, if you EVER, EVER try to contact Stephanie ever again I will get ALL of my friends to beat the living shit out of you, seriously. Bye, have a nice fucking life."

Then he hung up. There was nothing I could say. He knew the truth now, and he had always suspected that something weird was going on, but he never really tried to find out what it was, probably because he would rather just not have known. My life was over. I had no friends anymore. Not a single one. And I had no way of making new friends, as trying to make friends when you commute to college is hard enough for anyone, much more-so when you're as shy as I am. And even more than that, it was all over with Stephanie. I had never felt a connection to any woman in the same way that I felt a connection with her, and that was gone forever, and I was never going to get it back. I felt like I had no reason to live anymore, so I drank the half bottle of Vodka I had left, downed an assortment of pills from my medicine cabinet, and hoped I would never wake up.

Unfortunately, I did wake up, in the hospital, with my mother crying next to me. I was released into the care of my mother, who told me that she was going to put me into a treatment plan as soon as she could. My mother didn't know about any of the previous nights drama, so after I was taken to the hospital she called John to try and figure out what happened. John, being the great guy that he is, told her a version of the story that didn't make me out as a total psycho. When I got home, I checked the voice mail on my cell phone. There was one message, from John. He said that he was so sorry for being so mean to me last night, and that he shouldn't have said all of those things when he knew I was already depressed. He also said that my attempted suicide doesn't change anything, because he would have to choose between all of his other friends and me, and he just couldn't choose me. After that, I went to this psychiatric hospital for a week, which put me on anti-depressants and made me start seeing a therapist.

Since then things have been… OK, I guess. I've made a few new friends, but I've still never gotten a girlfriend or even kissed a girl. Pathetic, I know. Well, that's my story, I hope you guys don't think I'm too much of a weirdo. I know that most guys here can relate to being infatuated with a girl, so I don't really think it will be too much of a problem