Part of why I feared doing Daddy Recovery was that all my life my dad was defined by his almost god-like charisma, and I never felt charming enough to make my truth valuable or even believable by others. I was always so raw, sweet, and honest, but even with 3 more virtues than my dad I could not compare to his charm. It made feel like my authenticity was, somehow, not worth it, especially in this world. 

I always joke with friends, whom insist I should be a ¨bigger actress¨ by now or end up doing stand.-up or some of kind of popstar, that it is hard to put yourself out there when you were raised by cancel culture. My dad, in some ways, showed that cancel culture is just social media form of colonization, which is the belief that if you morally debase someone enough, you can materially take from them or, at the very least, make sure they do not have. In the words of TikTok, either way, a win is a win. It is why my dad was relentlessly telling me I was horrible and almost ridiculously bragging about how much he gave to his other family that I did not deserve. Every meeting was like that…. a meeting with cancel culture. 

Before any post I make, I swear, at least, 5 hours is spent with my finger over the publish button, especially if a post involves video. I just stare at myself thinking I am the ogre he called me, and know, even putting that in this article, might earn someone commenting, ¨Well, he did not lie.¨ I remember when Billie Eilish said how hard it is to come for haters, sometimes, because they can be really funny and try to flip on you that, somehow, you lack humor with yourself. People were confused by her statement but I had a direct example.  There was not one day in my life my mother did not tease me for something, and, frankly, I did not do that to her or enjoyed how incessantly it was. There were days I felt quiet and completely over existing, and then I’d go to the Internet and find someone had  left a comment on my Selena review that I look like Yolanda Saldivar, and, suddenly, I was off the internet again…. deleting another page. 

The truth is I always knew I was meant to be seen… to be famous, and that oddly scared me because it meant that I would always have to confront cancel culture. I would spend the rest of my life, in public, private, at home, and even in my dreams, confronting this energy that truly thought it had the right to end me and end my access to material wealth and resources. My father was so vicious with his words and tone, especially in public, that, eventually, I stopped asking. Our dates, were a tussle between hims verbally assaulting, a brief conversation on some new tv show we both liked, and me eating a salad, quietly, trying to act like I never wanted the burger. Yet, that is what cancel culture and any form of online base that is determined to destroy someone or something to materially replace or block it: it makes you live depressed and censored. 

One thing I always marveled about the internet, especially social media, is how many people are online versus how many people are trying to be influences versus how many people actually are successful at it. When you look at how many accounts do not have content or barely leave comments and have followers: most of us can say THAT is our reality. We are watchers of people that are doers, and we try to support them or avoid them because we know they would never support us, and if they rise the ranks of social media stardom, and enter places we do not like, private, all-inclusive events, we wonder if, somehow, we knew how to brand our better hearts, we, too, could feel so materially safe.