It happened to me not once…. not twice…. but three times. I mean, the saying goes three times a charm right?
Let’s take it back to 2009-ish. I was catfished way before “catfish” was an MTV show; I was catfished before it became something for people to do; I was catfished before people even knew what it meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you might be thinking… “did you not learn the first time?” “Why did you try again?” or my favorite.. “how in the world do you have such terrible luck that you get screwed over THREE times?” It’s a little confusing to be honest. I’ll start by saying this.. I was not catfished because I was online dating. I was not even on a dating site. It was on Myspace the first time it happened. I won’t get into each time to much because then I will dilute from the point of this article. However, I will say each time was a different experience.
I think I need to give a disclaimer: when I was catfished I was also not myself either; I did not use my picture, I did not use my name, and I did not use my personal information. How do I explain this without making it seem like I was catfishing someone? Well, truth is, I was not catfishing anyone. I feel the need to give a little background, so here we go:
The world I was involved with inside of Myspace was not for dating purposes. In my terms, I called it roleplay.. not in your sexual, fantasy way. What people in this online community (it was huge!) did was “roleplay” a celebrity. (I choose not to disclose the celebrity I was roleplaying). LET’S BE CLEAR.. WE MADE IT OBVIOUS THAT WE WERE NOT REALLY THEM. Plus those of us involved knew it was all fun and games. Moving forward… naturally we would add these other celebrities found in that circle. For example if this was happening today, and let me tell you, it probably is just not in the way it was happening during that time, then someone roleplaying Selena Gomez would befriend that circle which include other celebs like TSwift and so forth. Bare with me… I know it’s weird to grasp. Anyway, once you had established yourself you ventured out to other people that you would never see that celebrity with. Take someone like Selena Gomez again. She would probably not be seen with a band member from a rock band. This was a great way to make friends online and build solid friendships… you know, aside from the whole stigma that there were predators and child molesters online and we shouldn’t talk to strangers. Now, it is more acceptable to do such. Back in 2007 with the emergence of social media…. not so acceptable. After months (or even years) of constantly logging into this fake profile you either remained friends and told each other who you were or you stopped talking. My experience has a little bit of both. Friends who I will have known for almost ten years now and yes, we still talk. Then there were some who were some of the greatest people I met but we somehow lost touch. Anyway, so now that that has been staged, I’ll move forward.
While I was roleplaying, I met some amazing people. I even fake dated some guys.. or so I thought. Those three times that I fake dated guys, we told each other who we were…or so i thought. I was always honest with my identity with those who I felt I could trust and who had established a connection with me both romantically and friendships. I told them my name, age, showed them what I look like. Many of the people I encountered were honest, others continued to lie to me. They told me they were someone they weren’t. They gave me a fake name and a fake picture. Annnnnnnd….. here is where we progress into me being catfished THREE times…..
I will briefly talk about each time...
The first time was 2011. This fake relationship began late 2007, I was about 14/15 years old.. young, naive and stupid). We were both roleplaying different people who were actually dating at the time so that’s why we were drawn to each other. We talked all the time and it wasn’t until 2011 that I told “him” who I was. He told me who he was. We started dating IRL. Until I figured out he wasn’t a he and really it was a “she.” I was SO upset and so confused, yet understanding.
Fast forward to mid 2012…. I had left the roleplaying world and then out of boredom went back. Plus I still had a lot of friends on it. By this time, we had moved on to Facebook though. I met someone else. We did not date. We were the best of friends though.Two peas in a pod. I confessed, told him who I was etc. He did too… except not really. He used a fake name and a fake picture. Some time after, I found out who he really was…. another S H E. My luck right….
Now its 2014….my friend convinced me to go back yet again. I was pretty overwhelmed with work and school that this was my escape. I met another guy. Of course, I was skeptical. But something told me this one just MIGHT check out. Slightly different than the rest in the sense that he didn’t really lie to me. After talking for about 4 months, he told me who he really was… take a guess… SURPRISE! YET ANOTHER SHE. I was 3 for 3 at that point.
Too bad Nev and Max weren’t around to help me back then huh?
Now you’re probably wondering what happened after I found out. Here’s another plot twist…. i dated 2 of them. Here’s where my realization comes through though. All of my life I considered myself straight. I had never been interested in girls or attracted to them. Sure, it is the occasional “She’s pretty.” But never past that. Then this happened and I was left lost. How can I consider myself straight and still like only particular girls? It was such an internal battle. After falling for personalities, I realized why should the gender matter? Technically it is a social construct. Just like the idea that girls need to like boys and same sex relationships are frowned upon.
I was catfished, yes. If you read this, you might think that I am not very smart to have fallen each time but hey, i figured something out. I fall for personalities.. bonds… connections..chemistry and not genders. Sure, naturally I will always be attracted to males. But if the personality of a female attracts me, then I won’t out-rule it just because of gender. I don’t know what orientation or sexuality to consider myself. But does it really matter? In the end, we are all human. All capable of love. And we all have the ability to love who we want to without having to explain anything to anyone.
I am so glad we live in a time where it is being more widely accepted to live outside the norm and that we are stirring away from the binaries that have been imposed on us all our lives from generations before us.
To sum it all up: I figured out that I don’t exactly know what sexual orientation I am, but that I don’t need to know in order to live in my own truth.
P.S My last catfish…well we are still in a relationship. 🙂