My apple id "is not an Apple ID"

I have an apple ID with my email address but recently my iphone started asking me to validate my id. When I enter my password, it doesn't validate. When I tried logging into icloud on the web, it gave me a id/password incorrect error. When I tried to reset my password, it says <my email> is not an Apple ID. My email clearly is because I have confirmation emails from Apple on that ID and have been using it for some time