Escape Velocity / Freedom

It was over. Or so I thought.

After four high-octane years as the face of a YouTube channel watched by millions of people across the world, I finally plucked up the courage to quit. I say courage, but by that point, it was as much a reflex as it was the actions of a renegade. I physically could not make myself perform the gestures of duty any longer. It was do or die, and I couldn’t give another of the dwindling hours of my youth to a job that was compressing me. So, with every ounce of brazen I had left to muster, I strode out of the film studio doors one last time, determined not to look back over my shoulder at the dumpster fire that was, now, my career.

One step. Two steps. Three. Four. Okay,fuck,we’rereallyactuallydoingthis.

There’s this thing in the law of physics called “escape velocity”. It is the minimum speed an object needs to break free from a deep gravitational pull, like say from a moon, a planet, a black hole… or a highly successful YouTube channel you feared might actually be killing you. Working in service to the internet, chasing views, feeding the hungry mouth of the algorithm: it had become a void that threatened to gobble me up. For years, I watched myself inch closer and closer to the “event horizon”, the name given to the point of no return within a certain proximity to a black hole. Until that distance is crossed, there is a chance of escape if enough energy can be mustered. I felt myself being stretched, spaghettified. I knew if I did nothing, I would undergo a molecular alteration. In particle physics, we don’t yet know what happens to something when it enters a black hole, but the working theory is that it is crushed to a point of singularity from which it can never, ever, be restored. As I inched closer and closer to what I felt would be irrevocable change, the discomfort of being drawn to what was not right for me finally outweighed the discomfort of summoning the energy to fling myself off into the vast unknown. So, I took a deep breath, and I finally ejected myself. As in physics, I call these landmark and painfully pivotal moments in life “ reaching escape velocity.” And so there I was, flung into the streets of Toronto, Canada, 5000 earth kilometres away from “home”, $3,250 in the bank, no job, and absolutely nothing resembling a safety net to catch me in my free fall.

F u c k.

I wondered what Little Me would think of this turn of events? I was a starry-eyed child who longed to leave home, lick the moon, and play in the cosmos. Being a YouTuber wasn’t a “thing” to aspire to when I was young; we only got dial-up internet when I was 7. Who knew the world would take such a turn? Who knew we’d all one day have phones in our hands, feeding us a constant stream of infotainment to the point where we’re too overwhelmed to look away?

The family lore is that I was born a storyteller. I just came on out reading and yapping. I was always embodying some character or another, making up wild scenes from my imagination and staging them as plays for passers-by on stoops, steps, and walls in the street. Anything can be a stage with enough imagination. I would have been a fucking excellent town crier, or troubadour, or travelling bard, or something, but I was born the exact same year as the World Wide Web, so perhaps it was fated to claim me.

When I was offered the opportunity to be the face of a YouTube channel and steer it toward growth, it was Little Rebecca who cheered the loudest. She was the one who dreamed of telling stories to anyone who would listen; it was she who thought that “being someone” would be the epitome of success. I guess, to her, having a platform would mean actually being seen.

Oh, sweet baby girl, I’m sorry.

We would both learn that there is such a thing as over-exposure. That there can be “wrong” eyeballs, and that “growth” doesn’t always happen in the right direction. I had no idea just how big things would get, and just how much the scrutiny of six million strangers would hurt me, worse, how much it would hurt Little Me. How could I have sprouted from such a dreamer, only to arrive at the point where I couldn’t remember the last time I dreamt of anything except quitting my horrible job?

With the film studio suitably in the rearview, I slowed my pace from what had been nearing a run, my breath ragged while I grappled to hold my shit together. A red traffic light at a crossroads stopped me for long enough to see myself, as if from above. Thin. Too thin. Blonde. I was thirty years old and clutching my iPhone to my chest, as if it was going to save me from everything I had just ignited. I wondered then: how could I have become so different from the flame-haired, full-faced 26-year-old who had crossed this very same road on her way to an audition...the audition that would set in motion the events that shaped the next ten years of my life.

I was angry. I was sad. I was scared. Really scared. I was lost. I was hopeful. I was confused. I was hungry. I was sick. I was determined. I was paralyzed. Yes, I may have escaped a close call with the void, but now I had entered the expanse, and that seemed just as debilitating. As the lights on the crosswalk flicked to green, I didn’t move. I kept standing. I allowed everything I had squirrelled away into a little pocket of my mind labelled “BABE DON’T OPEN” passage into my body. I let it wash over me and, yeah, I allowed myself to cry. Not just for the sadness, but for everything. Feeling e v e r y t h i n g was simply too much for one soft human body without invoking some kind of chemical reaction. I didn’t know how to cleanse myself of all the things I had embodied in the last four years. I didn’t know who I was going to be next.

That evening, my friends threw me a party. They had strung up balloons spelling out “Freedom” across my wall and popped confetti in my face during joyous intervals, hugging me in congratulations, because they knew I’d just saved my own life. Or had I? I stood on chairs holding a wine glass aloft in my hand in victory, but found myself petrified of looking down at the floor.

“So, Rebecca, what are you going to do now that you are free?”

I gulped back my Cava.

Freedom, it turns out, was going to be a long road. Seven years later, and I’m still walking that path. Still, it felt very good, in the small hours of the next morning, to stare down that big red button that had defined my worth for far too long. It felt so good to finally click “unsubscribe”.

To be continued.

A farewell captured and posted to Instagram on the day of my departure from "The Channel"