Catfish: The TV Show and My Real Life Catfish Experience

My new favorite guilty pleasure is a show on MTV right now called, Catfish: The TV Show. Let me begin by saying, it’s so embarrassingly amazing! Anyone that has ever talked to someone online knows the horrors of talking to someone who is not who they say they are! There are spoilers ahead so don’t get mad at me if you read something you don’t want to! The MOVIE Catfish was a Sundance hit that documents a photographer Nev Schulman and it follows him to Michigan to meet a woman whom he had fallen in love with that he had met on Facebook. Nev meets Megan. She is a beautiful song writer, performer, etc. They have these amazing conversations, (including a very awkward sexting conversation that Nev describes rather hilariously later in the movie!) Along the way Nev talks to Megan’s Mom and younger sister, who they claim is a famous painter in Michigan. They get to Michigan to find a woman that is not Megan, but Megan’s mother. They go into the house to discover that Angela, (Megan’s mother,) was a very sad woman that was a care taker to two mentally challenged step sons, she painted on the side, and surprise surprise there was a Megan but it was not the Megan Nev had fallen in love with. It was Angela. I really didn’t give it justice, so you MUST check out the documentary Catfish, if you haven’t yet. In spite of all the lies, you really fall in love with the characters! Okay, so on to the TV show. Nev decides to take the same crew from the film, his brother and best friend, and make a TV show following people that have been in long-distance internet relationships, and help the people meet face to face. Every episode has been good! The crazy thing is, the whole time you’re hoping for there to be a happy ending! You want so bad for them to end up with each other! How hard were you laughing from the first episode? You have this really girly-girl type that looks like her name, Sunny. Sunny is in love with Jamison, a model/ tv writer who is studying to be an anesthiologist. Sunny and Nev go to knock on the door and who opens it? Not Jameson! It was an overweight, curly haired woman in her twenties! And Nev ask her, “Do you feel bad for what you’ve done?” When she shakes her head no, I thought Sunny was going to kill her! Okay, so here is another thing I love about this show- Nev goes back after he calms Sunny down, and he talks to the girl by herself just for an explanation. I mean, didn’t she feel bad at ALL, for stringing this sweet girl around and making her think she had met the love of her life? And meanwhile, is that not the cruelest joke? These people think they are going to meet the love of their lives. And it never is! What I really love is that Nev never attacks the girl. He wants to know her story too. What happened to you to make you create this alter ego? It turns out that this girl had been bullied and this on line alter ego that she had created had made her feel in control of her own life. Did I think it was total bullshit? Fuck Yes! Did I want to stop watching? Fuck, no! The next few episodes are amazing, too! I’m not going to talk about them in case you haven’t seen it. What are your real life Catfish stories? Mine begins when I am 15. The boy was 19 and his name was Jeremy. Jeremy was a track star and he was a freshman at U of E. We started talking on AIM. I knew who he was because he had gone a date with this older girl that I was friends with. I hung out with a lot of older people when I was a teenager. I knew this girl had no intentions of wanting to be with him and I thought he was SO cute! So I asked her for his AIM name. She gave it to me, and that night I put in his name and start to talk to him. He asks how old I am. I can’t tell him I’m only 15! He won’t wanna talk to me! I tell him I’m 21. And my name is Jessica since we had already met in real life, and in real life I’m Maegan. We talk for hours on end. He was the sweetest guy I had talked to up to that short 15 years on this planet. We talked for four months until Jeremy starts asking for a picture. I can’t show him a picture! He’ll know who I am then, and he’ll definitely know I’m not 21! And the sad thing is, I had developed real feelings for him. We talked practically EVERY night! And he had developed real feelings for me too. “Why won’t you send me a picture?” “When are we going to meet?” “I really want to meet!” I stopped getting online because I could never give him an answer, and I was tired of coming up with really dumb and lame excuses. Like, “I can’t send you a picture because I don’t know how to upload it.” At one point he tried explaining it step by step! The crazy thing is, we actually at that point had talked in person SEVERAL times. We got along in person VERY well. But I was 15. And he was about to turn 20! I remembered seeing him one day. He was sad. “What’s wrong, Jeremy? ” He shrugged, “Nothing. I’m just talking to this girl. I’m into her, but I don’t think she likes me.” I smile, because he said he liked me. But it’s not me. It’s her. This girl that won’t get him into trouble if they were to ever meet. Because I could’ve got him into A LOT of trouble! I started to tear up and I hugged Jeremy and ran home. I ran up stairs to my room. I turned on my computer. These were the days of dial up when it took forever for the internet to start! I got on AIM. “Hey.” I say to him. “Hey,” He replies. I start to type and I can’t believe the things that I’m putting on the screen. “I can’t talk to you anymore. I don’t love you. I met someone and I’m getting married.” I hit enter, turned the computer off, and fell to my bed in tears. At that moment I wanted so bad to be older! I wanted to run to Jeremy like Meg Ryan in you’ve Got Mail and say, “It was me.” But I couldn’t. After a few months I didn’t talk to Jeremy anymore. Not even in person. A few years had passed and I turned 22. I got on Aim one day and Jeremy was on. I hadn’t thought about him in years. I started to talk to him. Jeremy had done good for himself. He graduated from U of E in Accounting, he worked for a small firm, and he had met the love of his life, Cindy. They were expecting a baby in two months. So, that’s my real life Catfish story. I actually ran into Jeremy a few years later. He was doing really good and he was really happy to hear what had happened in my life. I never told him who I was, but sometimes the mystery is better than the reality. What are your real life Catfish stories?

My Only Wish For Christmas

Trent has been having a REALLY hard time. Without going into details, (because the details are actually pretty gruesome and incriminating, ) Trent and I are no longer talking to his sister Dana. That is why I haven’t been writing about her in the blog. And while I love Dana very much I don’t see the situation getting better anytime soon.

The reason why we loved hanging out downstairs, other than the fact that they are family is because we don’t have kids. It’s easy to become close to your nieces and nephews when they live so close and you have disposable income and you don’t have kids of your own. And Dana is really fun too!

So, Trent and I actually avoid downstairs at all cost. It’s a weird topic so we don’t even really talk about it with each other. It happened so fast, the situation that occurred,  and it was done during a very stressful time. Everyone was really stressed about Travis’ recovery.

So, I know a few of my readers have asked about Dana and the kids and how they are doing. We learned from Trent’s Dad that Dana is going for her reversal surgery for her colostomy bag in January and I was told by the kids that they are about to go on vacation to Florida for Christmas!  So, good things are happening all around, its just unfortunate that there is so much animosity.  Especially during this time of the year. Because if you can’t ask for peace at Christmas time, then when can you?

My husband is really depressed for the first time since we lost the twins. We were watching It’s A Wonderful Life, (Trent and Mine’s FAVORITE Christmas movie!) And I had dozed off. I woke up to it still being on. Trent was in tears, “I love Dana. I’m still really mad but I don’t want her to die from the reversal surgery.”

And I actually usually know what to say to make things better. But this time I didn’t. This time I just sat there, held him, and listened while he cried.

We get to the end, the part where everyone comes in with baskets of money for George Bailey, and Trent starts crying again. “When is MY Bedford Falls going to help ME out?”

And really, its such a Universal thought to have isn’t it? When you’re in trouble and in your deepest and darkest place don’t you WANT someone to come in and cash in all of your Karma points? Don’t you want everyone to remember EVERY good deed you’ve ever done? And the sad thing is, Trent has done A LOT. It’s time for his ship to cone in.

I think right now Trent has gained a significant amount of weight, he feels he’s in a dead end job, but more importantly, he feels as if he has no family. And how do you make something better when it has gotten SO bad. Do you all have any suggestions?  I’ll take any help in this area Because I would lasso the moon for Trent.

It’s a long shot to ask for peace with his family right now, but that is my ONLY wish for Christmas.  I KNOW it’s a longshot and it would take a miracle, but, hey -Christmas is about miracles.