I've always found that there is a lot of truth in the statement that there's a thin line between love and hate. But it wasn't until August 2000, when I came face-to-face with a girl who hated me without ever having met me before, that I realized how thin that line could be.

Web Of Lies
I've wanted to be a singer my whole life, and I've spent years of blood, sweat and tears to make this dream come true. This is just who I am. In fact, if I didn't have my record deal with Lava/Atlantic, I would be the kind of person who was living out of her car touring the country with a jazz band. That could have been me. I started dating Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys in 1998, I began getting less attention for my singing and more for being the pop singer with the most Web sites dedicated against her.

I first became aware of the web craziness in 1999 when my best friend, Kevin, called me up and said, "Oh, my God, you've got to get on the computer. There's a girl who'se going on the Internet and posting really bad things about you." After checking it out, I learned that some people very close to Nick had tried to hurt him and our relationship by posting a letter on the Net that he had supposedly written. The letter outlined ways I had supposedly hurt Nick, including being physically abusive to him and stealing his big-screen TV.

I could tell right away that the letter was fake- and not only because everything in it was a lie. Nobody in the world knows Nick better then I do, and I knew he wouldn't write something like this. Nevertheless, what started out as an isolated attempt to hurt Nick sparked more than sixty anti-Willa Web sites; all before I had even released my first album. The girls launching these sites just wigged out saying, among other things that I had bruised and slapped Nick, yelled at his fans and kidnapped his dog. As crazy as the sites were, at first I thought they were kind of funny. But when some of them started a boycott against my record company and then went so far as to suggest that I kill myself, I realized this was serious stuff.

Hiding the Pain
It was seriously painful, too. Eventually the sites knocked me into such a deep depression that I could hardly function. Everything was tumbling down around me, I couldn't eat and I lost a lot of weight. I tried to act like I was good to go, but it must have been obvious that I wasn't. Daily doses of Paxil and Xanax helped me through my struggles, but it was the tremenendous support from my family, friends and fans that really kept me going. When Kevin wasn't coming over to my house to feed me pizza because he was worried I wasn't eating enough, I was hearing from fans how inspiring it was that I was working through all the negative attention.

Taking a Stand
So, I tried to focus on the fans in the summer of 2000, when I went on a concert tour sponsered by Nautica. At one of the performances a fan warned that the front row of the audience was filled with anti-Willa people. I did my best to keep it out of my mind. "I don't have time for this right now," I told myself. "I've got fans here and that's all that matters."

When I finished signing autographs after the concert, I noticed one of the girls from the front row standing there staring at me. This time I couldn't push her out of my mind. So I stared back, giving her one of my best "What!? Do you have a problem with me?" looks. It must have worked, because she came over and started shouting in my face, saying, "You did this, and you did that," basically repeating all the lies on the Web sites.

Before she could finish and walk away, I said, "Listen, I want to sit down and talk with you. I don't understand why everybody hates me. Maybe you can help me out." And that's what we did. We just sat there talking, telling each other our side of the story. She was really mean to me in the beginning, but the conversation started to turn when I explained how everything had started with the fake letter. Believe it or not, by the time we were done talking, she'd promised to take her anti-Willa site down and replace it with a fan site.

"It's going to take time for all the other girls to understand, and they're not going to beleive me when I tell them," she told me. "But when they do realize that they've spent all this time pitting themselves against you because of lies, they're going to want to spend three times that to do positive things for you."

The Beat Goes On
So that's why I say there's a thin line between love and hate, and why now I realize that I am steadily on that line. It's up to me to change the balance. On one side I've got my parents, who are so proud of what I've accomplished; my friends, who often try to come up with ideas for Web sites about how cool I am; my fans, who are simply the best; and God, who gave me the ability to sing. On the other hand I have the anti-Willa girls. They may want to do whatever they can to end my career, but I've got God on my side. Beyonce Knowles of Destiny's Child once said that the minute you start thinking you're the bomb and stop thanking God for the gifts He's given, He takes those gifts away. Well, I thank God every day, and I know He's watching over me. Only by continuing to sing can I eventually convince these girls: just like I did with the girl on the Nautica tour; who the real Willa is.

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