Getting "Self-Catfished"

When I say "I got 'self-catfished'," a lot of people would think “Oh, she fooled herself by acting like someone she wasn’t, got in some sort of trouble, learned a lesson and finally became honest and truly found herself.” Well, I must say “Yes” and “No.” Yes, I fooled myself, but not by making myself fake, but by making up and believing in nothing but the “fake figures” of people around me. As for Vince Pierce, the catfish is needed for such reasons. 

“And I thank god for the catfish 

because we would be droll, 

boring 

and dull 

if we didn't have somebody nipping at our fin."

 As for me, I couldn’t treat others without making them all into a bunch of catfishes.

 The first person I catfished was my sister. Not only was she the first, but she was the most ideal, and the most perfected person that I had made up. Having long, boring train trips every weekend, my sister and I had no other friends than each other to play with. (My mom and dad were weekend couples) And as a kid, my 3-year older sister was a little hero to me. To me, she was the best among her age, very pretty with long silky black hair, but at the same time very strong with the firmest fist (she had a black belt in taekwondo). She also read really thick books and solved the most complex mathematics. However, the “perfect figure” of my sister shattered when we came back from the United States. My sister applied for “Chungshim”, a foreign language middle school, and actually got rejected from their interviews. As a fifth grader, I felt betrayed because as a “straight A” student, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t do well enough to get accepted. I felt catfished by the catfish that I, myself, had created upon my sister.

 For a while, I was too disappointed to face my sister like I used to. All my respect and expectations were gone with the “betrayal.” One after another, I started examining more and more flaws of hers. She actually was really bad at math, her long silky hair was not so much silky after all, and she was no longer stronger than I was. In the end, I obviously had to accept her flaws as she was my own sister and the fact that I loved her didn’t change no matter what. But still, it was a very big impact that enlightened me to see how I easily “get catfished by making others into a catfish.”

 Although you can’t particularly say that I got in a trouble for getting catfished, but I certainly learned a lesson from it. And yes, I still have a small tendency to set up “figures” in my minds for those around me and get disappointed every time somebody deviates, but at least now, I have my eyes and ears wide open to flaws I can find.

Perhaps, I clearly explained it now. How to get “Self-Catfished.