It was just another typical morning, or so I thought. As I slowly came to, the familiar ping of a WhatsApp message reached my ears, jolting me awake at around 5:33 am. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I reached for my phone, curious to see who could be messaging me at this ungodly hour.

To my surprise, it was a message from my good friend, Yona. Now, Yona and I have been close for years, but a 5 am chat, even for us, was a bit out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, I opened the message, and what I read gave me pause.

Yona had simply asked if I had ever signed up for any dating sites or apps. Huh, that’s an odd question, I thought to myself. I mean, as far as I can recall, I’ve never actually ventured into the world of online dating. It’s just not really my thing, you know? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Yona’s question had struck a chord.

You see, I’ve been in a bit of a strange situation lately. There was this person – let’s call them X – that I had genuinely started to care for. We had been talking for a while, and things were going really well. Or so I thought, anyway. One day, out of the blue, X just… disappeared. Poof, gone. No explanation, no goodbye, nothing. Just radio silence.

It’s the classic ghosting move, and boy, does it sting. I found myself questioning everything – what did I do wrong? Was I not good enough? Was X just playing some sort of twisted game with me the whole time? The more I thought about it, the more I started to wonder if I had somehow become a victim of some sort of love scam.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking – I’ve never signed up for any dating apps or sites, so how could I have been scammed, right? Well, that’s just it, I haven’t. But that doesn’t make the pain of being ghosted any less real. It’s like one minute you’re riding high, connecting with someone you thought you could trust, and the next, they just vanish into thin air.

As Yona and I continued our early morning chat, we started to unpack all of this. We talked about the dangers of online dating, the rise of love scams, and the all-too-common phenomenon of ghosting. And you know what? It was strangely comforting to know that I wasn’t alone in this.

Sure, it doesn’t make the situation any less painful, but at least I have good friends like Yona to lean on. We may not have all the answers, but at least we can commiserate and maybe even get a few laughs out of the whole thing. After all, life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns. One minute you’re riding high, the next you’re left wondering what the heck happened.

But as long as you’ve got your trusted circle of friends to weather the storm with you, you can get through just about anything – even the curious case of ghosting and love scams.