Oh No. I Lost My Crown.

The year I made it… and started to lose it all.

COVID-19 marked the beginning of when my life started to collapse. Well… the mark of the beginning of the end of my death, well, Palmer’s death, and the life I had created. The version of me that I loved.

There was the version of me reserved for family. Quiet. Polite. Compliant. Loved, but only under certain conditions.

And then there was my true identity.

Palmer. Palmer had one goal defined by the very things that I loved about him. It was a mission dedicated to “inspiring confidence, happiness, and health” in all that I do. Health, creativity, love, food, work, all of it.

I loved him.

The Day I Made It

Though I had several careers across the marketing spectrum while I lived in Atlanta, the glorious day came when I was recruited, and after several interviews, I was offered the dream job. The one job that my family would be proud of, I was ecstatic. Beyond even.

You have to understand, on my mother’s side, my granny was the matriarch. The queen bee from one of the deepest parts of rural Georgia. In her final years, I was her everything, and she was mine. But that’s another chapter.

With those deep southern roots, the opportunity to do contract work for a media company with an account for one of the most iconic companies in the South, maybe even globally, felt like everything. It felt like proof that I had made it. That I could finally be loved the way I had always wanted to be. A classic, for those grown in the deep south and even more so in the state of Georgia.I was able to live on my own. By a brand new car. I could take on new relationships and afford to pay for fancy dancy dinners for men that I had interests in. I could travel. I loved to go places.

Not only was affordability no longer an issue. But I was invited to all kinds of events. Premiers, openings, fashion shows, well… you get the idea. I was included. I was wanted. I was finally happy. Well. Almost.

There was still one condition that separated me from living authentically, being completely happy, and finally free.

Palmer wasn’t allowed to come home with me.

Coming Home

Only John could come home for the holiday, the family events, the moments in life that you share with the ones you love, rather, the ones who are supposed to love you without conditions.

Each hour that I drove down the I-75 highway to hell, I became someone else entirely. I would evolve in stages that shrunk me smaller, then smaller, and eventually John would consume who I had become, Palmer. Slowly, I became more and more limited, and the “appropriate” persona had to take over before I pulled into that oyster and sand-rounded drive, hidden behind the tall oaks, pines, and bushes that covered the drive’s opening. I hated that drive.

I would stop every hour, at the same spots off the highway, knowing full and well that I knew the location of every candy bar, beverage, car oil, even, just to waste time. I would still just browse because, well, because I didn’t want to hide myself, I didn’t want to leave Palmer at the Florida-Georgia line. It got so bad that I would often make up these scenarios where I had been stuck in a traffic jam because of a horrible accident that would extend and delay my journey for countless hours at a time. The family believed it most of the time. I think eventually they began to catch on to what was happening. But the reality of it all was that I wanted to be anywhere but there. Anywhere but home. Where I was limited.

The Reality of Living the Dream

At first, the dream job was exactly what I needed. I learned social listening, a skill that gave me both power and curiosity as I explore new conversations and topics to deliver stellar data, build creative, meaningful campaigns, and make clients incredibly happy with the results. I developed quite the knack for communicating data in a way that helped even the most uninterested and oftentimes incomprehensible understand what the data was telling us, and how we could develop the numbers on a screen into campaigns that delivered meaningful action. It felt like marketing magic. We were working with information in a way that was new, exciting even. It was sharpened information spearheaded from conversations across social media. I was the dawn of a new age in social media. Before videos had taken over completely, influencers had to build and earn virality before it was granted. Much different from what it is today, with the same desire to influence people to do the things that make money. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But at the end of the day, it is always about the money.

It was an incredibly rewarding and meaningful experience on most days, that is, until the world stopped. Do you remember? I do. But it’s in pieces that I am still trying to reconnect with the mismatched spaces and fragments in between.

You remember 2020. Right?

2020

Here’s a recap of the year that made the world stall:

The Main Event:

• COVID-19 Pandemic: The WHO declared a global pandemic in March, leading to worldwide lockdowns, economic disruption, and the rapid development of vaccines (Pfizer authorized in December).

• Social Justice Movement: Widespread global protests began in May following the murder of George Floyd, sparking a national conversation on police brutality and systemic racism.

• U.S. Politics: The year saw the Senate impeachment acquittal of President Donald Trump (Feb), the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, and the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

• Tragedies and Deaths: Basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and seven others died in a helicopter crash (Jan). Chadwick Boseman and John Lewis also passed away.

• Natural Disasters: Record-setting Australian bushfires (early 2020) and a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season occurred.

• Global Events: The United Kingdom formally left the European Union (Brexit). A massive explosion occurred in Beirut, Lebanon, in August.

• Technology/Space: SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts into orbit in May.

• California Focus: In addition to the pandemic, the state experienced its worst wildfire season on record.

I know. Rough, right? But here is how I experienced it. A multiplication of tragedy, all in the name of data science.

Here is how it works. When you, the average person, scroll down into the happy cats and tending dances on your phone, you’re seeing maybe 1% of reality. Filtered. Curated. Optimized for engagement. Developed through a logarithm that is catered to make you touch, feel, and watch mindlessly for hours on end because it makes big social media more money.

But behind the platform, there are no filters.

Just raw data. Data, that is, in the form of conversations, images, and videos, is put up for the world to see. Some of it is good, much of it is bad. But all was created for you to consume.

On the one side, I had the ability to see the good in the world. The happy moments of life. Where people, for marketing purposes, average Americans would enjoy new products, share their experiences with old ones, and help us create new opportunity for revenue and tailor our campaigns to deliver better results.

The other side of this was that every conversation, inspired by our differences, every opinion that nobody ever asked for, and every piece of hate was created and consumed by me. The data guy. From the keyboard warriors who know more than scientists, to every moment of violence against people who just wanted to be seen, understood, and heard. Guns, wars, torture, you name it. Multiplied through a magnifying glass for me to consume.

The Darkness

And when you sit in that long enough, it changes you. The consumption of trauma, in conversations and graphics, infects your soul with darkness. You go black, little by little. I began to die inside.

It gets deep into your system to accomplish only one goal in its evil mission: to destroy from the inside out, and it never leaves.

The things people say. The things people do. The cruelty that exists behind a screen is unreal.

The good thing is that despite all of the darkness that is happening in this world as we turn each day, most of you will never see it because it’s filtered and cleaned long before it reaches you at home while sitting in a death scroll.

But I saw it.

All of it.

And I knew something wasn’t right. My insides felt different. I felt aged.

I knew I wasn’t okay.

The problem when a new experience is thrust upon us is that we often don’t have the language for it. When the world decides that you have been chosen for this experience, it’s something you have to navigate alone. There were no words for what had happened to my mind, to later bleed into my veins and consume my body, soul, and spirit.

I didn’t know how to explain what was happening inside me, so I didn’t say anything at all.

And when you can’t name it, the feeling, it can’t be explained. It can’t be shared.

And when you can’t share it, no one understands. I was feeling something new as social media shifted its presence. It became angrier, quieter, and more intense. From this anger, I had to do my job. I continued to deliver numbers and strategies based on the good found in so much hate until… the good wasn’t enough anymore to save me. As the sentiment of online conversation became ever more negative with each passing day of isolation and globally impacting events, I began to fall apart. What became a moment of “I finally love myself” divebombed into “Oh no"! I lost my crown.” Palmer was no longer the man that I had created. John became my default.

Then my dog passed.