The Story of a Former Catfish

There are times that I look at myself in the mirror, and I absolutely hate what I see. I look at my dry skin (that STILL manages to break out somehow), my glasses, my weight, my stringy hair, dry lips, and I'll nitpick at myself. I'm constantly changing the way that I look due to all of these insecurities. I'll change my makeup style, layer it on heavily with bright colored highlights, smokey eye, etc, or I'll have a completely natural look. I'll get new glasses that hide half my face so that, at least in my mind, people can't see how hideous I actually am.

It's strange. I get told I'm cute, a lot. My friends tell me, my family tells me, I've even had strangers stop me in a gas station parking lot to tell me I'm gorgeous and ask for my number. The gas station incident was right after I left the Emergency Room, so I can't imagine that I actually looked good, but the point is, this guy thought that I did. I get picked up on every time I go out to a bar, even though I don't drink. I have guys try to take me home. I've been with and dated men that I felt were so out of my league that I couldn't make any sense out of it.

I've also always been told that I have a great personality. I'm sweet, funny, the "cute" friend, in comparison to some of the girls that I know. I've been told that I'm charismatic, convincing, my personality is vibrant, and I can light up a room with it, once you get past my layer of shyness and insecurity, of course. I'll start out quiet, and then once I get to know someone, I'll talk... constantly. There's almost no return.

That's not the point of this tale, though. This is the tale of how I ended up breaking my own heart. I guess I could have made the introduction shorter. It seems like everyone can see where this one is going. I know the general response is going to be, "You don't lie to someone that you love!" And then the normal response of putting their fingers in their ears, screaming and stomping around if I try to explain myself. (That might be an exaggeration.)

I didn't intend to love this man. I was on this app, you may have heard of it, called Whisper. My boyfriend at the time was into some, erm, not so PG, or even rated R things for that matter. Definitely in the rated X category, they were a bit freaky, generally involving me speaking to other men, having them talk to me in a manner... well, it was a less-than-nice manner. It was having other men be mean to me, and then he and I would finish the deed. It was a turn on for both of us, even though it ended up kind of breaking me down a little bit. After a while, I started to believe all the things that he wanted these guys to say to me, even though it was still a turn on. Instead of stopping and trying a different route, we went down this path and found this other girl's photos. That's correct. My boyfriend at the time was involved in the catfishing.

Instead of degrading and saying these filthy things to me, it felt like they were saying them to her, and I could accept that. I don't know why it made the difference, but I could take them saying things to a different picture. There was this one guy in particular who knew that I had a boyfriend. I was always upfront about that. We ended up exchanging phone numbers, texting, calling at times, but it was always innocent conversation unless I had permission from my boyfriend.

Well, that boyfriend? I guess he didn't feel that he needed permission to actually physically do the act with another woman, and that relationship came to a very sudden, unexpected end. The guy that I was speaking to on the phone became a very important piece of my life. We started talking more, and more, and more. I didn't agree with some of his life choices, but I thought that over everything, he was sweet, kind, loyal, honest, and he was just my type physically. Well, he was the type that I had daydreamed about since I was old enough to know that I had a crush—the ginger with the great smile, bright eyes, ambitious, hardworking, dedicated, and he was a hopeless romantic. I started falling, and falling fast.

He even "introduced" me to some of his friends, and they became important to me, too. Especially a specific friend, let's just call him A. These guys were halfway across the country. I gave them a Google Voice number and thought that it would never matter until they asked what kind of phone I had. Without thinking, I was honest and said it was a Samsung S8, and oh boy, oh boy, he had a Samsung too! Why wasn't the Video Call an option? Every time he tried to call "Kayleighdite" (a mixture of my name with Aphrodite), it said, "Kayleighdite is not available for a video call at this time." And I could "try" too, and even send screenshots saying "M is not available for a video call at this time" and pretend that I just didn't know why.

I don't know how long I thought I could pull this off. M and I started making plans to get together, in person, to be with each other. He started working harder to get a better place to live so that his "Princess" wouldn't have to live in the disaster that he was living in. He was always out with his friends, or in with his friends, specifically A. A became somewhat important to me, as well. I guess it was what you could call a "friendship" where we would talk to each other semi-regularly, and then when he was in jail, well, I accepted charges, put money in his account to talk to him, and put money on his books. A, M and I even had a three-way phone chat at one point, and it was fun. It was great.

This went on for months, almost half a year of M constantly asking about video chatting, and me coming up with... Well, they were real answers as to why I couldn't. I was very ill for a while, in and out of ER's almost every other day, and unsure of how to handle it with no health insurance, and then feeling constantly stressed and anxious, expecting him to someday find a picture of the girl that he thought that I was. She had thousands of Facebook friends and I had a weak story about not using social media due to all the drama, aside from the app that we met on, of course. You could remain anonymous there, and that created less drama.

He sent me money, food, flowers, would stay on the phone with me while I was ill and trying to get some sleep, barely able to stay asleep, and whenever I woke up, he was there. I started drinking heavily, I think, in part to deal with my own conscience. I knew what I was doing was wrong. He was asking for photos pretty regularly. Luckily, this girl had a lot, if only I could keep the Snapchat filter out of them, because, well, of course, I didn't use Snapchat. I don't want people to be able to access me, right?

One night, after seeing a psychiatrist, I got on anti-anxiety meds. They actually calmed me down enough and I knew what I had to do. I told him the truth about everything. I told him that I wasn't the girl in the pictures. He said that he had kind of expected it, and had tried to prepare himself for it, but he really wasn't ready for it. He then told me that I had to tell A myself. At this point, A was still in jail, and on that phone call, well, I told him. He kept telling me that everything was going to be okay, everything was fine, and that it was fixable while I was crying to him, knowing that M was never going to speak to me again.

I reimbursed all the money that M gave me and asked him if that was it, if I needed to disappear now. Every fiber of my being was hoping, almost praying, that he was going to say no, that he would say that we could talk, that we could work something out, that it would be okay. He just gave one short word, and even through the mask of psychiatric medication, I felt like everything inside of me just shattered. "Yes." We said a short goodbye after that. I burnt the love poem that he sent me with the flowers. My parents, unknowing about why the flowers were there, where they came from (they were delivered to my parents. I was there while I was ill) kept them up on display until they died. I remember taking a quick photo of them and the caption being, "Still beautiful, even after they've died." I guess that was supposed to be some "deep" representation of what he meant to me.

Our—what you could call—relationship was over. I didn't hear from him. I've heard one thing from A since he was released from jail. That was that. It was over. Sometimes, I hate myself for telling the truth, but realize, rationally, it had to come out at some point, sooner or later, right? It couldn't be something that was just hidden forever. I couldn't hide behind the mask of this thin, tatted, pierced blonde for the rest of my life. I had to show him who the true me was.

I constantly have thoughts about "could have," "should have," "would have," and try to tell myself that they'll go away. They haven't. It's been almost a month, and I'm sure that he's moved on, and found some stunningly beautiful girl that he's just crazy about, and I hope nothing more than that she treats him right.

I'm writing this two days before my birthday, and my only birthday wish is for him to be happy. Not to hear from him, I know that would cause him to suffer further, but just for him to be happy and know his value. We bonded over depression and not valuing ourselves for different reasons, of course. Mine is more related to PTSD, I think that his is as well, but we have different ways of struggling through. I just genuinely, really hope that he has found his happiness, his Princess that he so wanted to love, and that she shows him all the love in the world.

It breaks my heart knowing that it's not me, and it never will be. I've cried to a therapist a few times, knowing that I'm not going to hear from A or M again. They aren't going to be a part of my life, and they aren't going to be. It wasn't about the money, attention, etc. It was about the friendship, the genuine care that I felt radiating off of them, something that I've never felt before, and knowing that I took it away from myself. There will never be enough ways to say that I regret what I've done and that I miss them. I just know that now I need to redirect my focus, be myself, be who I am, and truly, genuinely love myself. If there's a form of love that each person deserves, it's self-love.