Dear Curious Readers: how well do we truly know one another?
We are not simply who we present ourselves to be…We are the sum of every fear, voice, and expectation that came before. And so, dear reader… how well do we truly know one another?
The first reel I ever shared online may have been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Because no one judges you more than the people who claim to cheer you on the loudest.
And when you show your true self online, the side you’ve mostly hidden just to fit in, people will judge. Because let’s be honest, unless you’re a celebrity, or at least adjacent to one, everyone starts from nothing online.
And when you finally share something that comes from the heart, even if it’s something as simple as a silly video about your love of Disney, the people closest to you usually won’t get it.
Because up until that moment, your world has been limited by proximity.
And the second you take that first step online, that boundary is broken.
But before you can branch out, you have to wade through the side-eyes. The confusion. The quiet judgment from friends and family who don’t understand, and if we’re being honest, sometimes don’t want to.
If you find yourself there, just remember this.
They are living the life they chose, with boundaries that feel safe to them. And when someone steps outside of those boundaries, it disrupts that safety. It forces people to consider that maybe, just maybe, the world is bigger than they thought.
That people can be a little more quirky. A little more different.
And that’s not a bad thing.
So be prepared.
When you start showing up online, the people you are closest to, the people you see every day, may disappoint you.
And even if you try to hide it from them, they will find you.
But they may not follow you.
But you will also find others.
People who don’t look at you as something to be understood, but someone to be accepted. Someone to be loved exactly as you are.
But if I’m being really honest.
Some of those people will disappoint you too.
And even in a space filled with thousands of people who get it, you can still feel completely alone.
But before I dive deeper into that, I think it matters to go back.
Back to the beginning.
To understand how we ever got here in the first place.
Because none of this started online.
Looking back, there are three themes that feel like they shaped my childhood more than anything else.
The first was fear.
From a young age, fear played a major role in my life. And when you don’t have the tools to understand or process it, fear has a way of taking over. It fills in the blanks. It twists things. It makes you question what’s real and what’s not.
The second was weight.
And I mean that literally.
Growing up, my body was something that was talked about a lot. And if you were someone who grew up in the 90s-00s diet culture you will surely understand this too.
It wasn’t just comments here and there. It was being left out. It was the quiet understanding that I wasn’t quite enough as I was.
The constant messages, spoken and unspoken, that if I didn’t lose weight, I wouldn’t be good enough.
And when you hear that enough, it stops being something people say and starts becoming something you believe.
It shapes how you see yourself.
How you show up.
How much space you allow yourself to take up in the world.
And even when no one is saying it anymore, you still hear it.
The third was religion.
I grew up Nazarene, (think footloose without the cool dance scenes) which meant even thinking a bad thought could feel like it carried eternal damnation.
That kind of pressure doesn’t just shape your behavior.
It shapes how you think.
How you see yourself.
How you question everything.
And more importantly it confuses love and fear in a way that it hard to unravel.
Because no matter what you do, how much you pray, you still feel like you are failing and unworthy of love. So eventually you may start wondering…why even try????
I now understand what I experienced (and still experience) was a medical condition I needed treatment for, not a curse I needed prayed away, but again…another story for another time…we will get there i promise.
Now when you take those three things, fear, weight, and religion, and layer them together, you get me.
A very simplified version, of course.
There were other people, other moments, other experiences that shaped who I am. Sports being a huge one.
But these felt like the foundation. The most influential pieces of the story.
So when I say this is my content creation journey, I don’t just mean the internet.
I mean everything that led me to it. What I think draws a lot of people to it.
The search for connection.
For expression.
For a place where your voice finally feels like it belongs.
And then the gut punch reality that that voice always comes with a cost.
Which is why, when I received an invite to a content creator only cruise with Virgin Voyages and TikTok (if you need context this means an entire ship full of media, creators and influencers coming together to create content and share their experience), leaving next month, my first thought was excitement.
But then just as quickly, it turned into.
“No way I’m doing that.”
But the questions remain.
Why?
What happened to make me like this?
And…
Am I going?
I guess we will see…
