Impersonators and Authenticity

Last year in the two weeks before Halloween I was dealing with a weird and frankly, scary situation. I had an on-line impersonator who had created a few different social media profiles with my name (and her photo) where she claimed my publications, credentials and credits. I only discovered it because I am (yes, I admit it) a self-Googler. I noticed my Wikipedia stats had changed--I was 20 years younger and I was African-American and Mexican. Well, that was the first iteration. Each time I tried to have the page changed or taken down, she'd change it to something even more defamatory. The whole thing took a strange turn when she responded to my email telling her that someone was impersonating me with her photo--I couldn't be sure that the joke wasn't also on her at that point. But her long and bizarre response began with "Forgive me if you are a real person and I have mistaken your information as my own. It's just that, I would testify under penalty of pergery [sic] that several of these things you have published in your name are my work. So either I am Heidi, [and] you should be sued for plagerism [sic], or we have some other connection I may not be remembering." Funny more now but at that point it was disturbing. After I finally got a couple of social media companies to take down her fake profile (BTW Facebook would not take it down), and Wikipedia editors restored the page, she gave up. She wrote on one of her profiles that she was glad she wasn't me because my "brother Jimmy" (I have no brother Jimmy--she was referencing a character in a story I wrote) had killed her entire family. Yup. So after two weeks of being terrorized by an online impersonator I went to a Halloween costume party as something I knew I could nail: I went as myself! Flash forward to this year and I am thinking about dealing with my impersonator but really I'm thinking about authenticity. What is really me? Am I living the life that serves me? I feel like I do a lot for others -- creating space for their stories. Am I creating that space for myself? I'm not sure that I am. And that has to change even if I can't be supportive of creating community as I have for the last many years. Stay tuned.