It all started in 2012 in a chatroom.

I met a guy who I thought I would really make a good friend, so we started chatting on Whatsapp. The following year, when I was doing my first year at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), he told me studied at the same campus as me.

We started out as friends

Although we hadn’t met in person before, we became close friends as the years went by. We were loyal to each other. A day wouldn’t pass without us texting each other. One day, when I was moving between campuses, he texted that he had just seen me on the school bus.

He described everything I was wearing; shorts, sneakers, a vest and he even added that I had an eye piercing and a tattoo (which was correct).

I asked why he didn’t greet me and he told me he was with his friends and we should arrange a proper meeting.

We started dating online during the first week of February 2013. Whenever we were meant to meet up, he kept postponing. But he also kept texting and telling me about my moves around the campus.

There’s a tavern just outside the campus. One night he drunk-dialled from the tavern in the early hours of the morning. He asked for my room number, so he could come and sleep at my place. I gave him my room number but he didn’t pitch as he promised.

I started suspecting that I was being catfished

He always said his name was Mishack. I started becoming suspicious and a bit scared because I was dating someone who I had not met in person even though he claimed to see my all the time.

It felt like he was stalking me.

I started showing his pictures to people who had been on campus longer than I had. No one knew him. This was a few months into our “relationship”.

I told him that no one recognises him around the campus and asked him to tell the truth. He started ignoring my texts, so my friend took his number and contacted him on WhatsApp. Surprisingly, he told my friend his name was Vusi and sent him different photos to the ones he sent me.

Still the photos he sent to my friend were not of him because no one, on campus, knew this guy either.

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We tried to track him but we failed. That was a big problem for me because I started thinking that he might be a crazed stalker. He texted me again and asked if we could meet. He promised he wouldn’t cancel this time

I believed him. I mean, he was the one begging to meet now.

He stood me up.

He told me he was sorry but he’d had unexpected visitors and he couldn’t have just left them all alone in his room. Then it dawned on me that I was being catfished. I was hurt. I thought we had a good thing going but I guess I was wrong.

The sad thing about Mish is that up until today I still don’t know who he is or if we were ever really attended the same campus.

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