Call It What You Want To

Chapter 28: Kyler

In the last three weeks, my video "Breaking My Silence" has collected over a million views and tens of thousands of comments. That's not even including the amount of times that clips of my twenty minute video have been trimmed and reposted to TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. The views had started to accumulate almost instantly, which kind of shocked me considering that the channel I posted to didn't even have my name in it.

Other than Taya, Mark, and Carrie, the only person that knew I was posting the video was Milana. I felt like she had a right to know. She had given me the best heads up that she could about my mom's comeback video, and considering that I was going to be discussing my siblings in the video, I figured I owed them the same courtesy.

Lani knew about ten minutes before the video went live, and told me that she did her best acting when our mom asked her about the video the next day after she realized it had been posted. Apparently, my mom tried to report the video for false information, but YouTube let the video stay up and my story was shared for everyone.

There wasn't much to say in the video, other than the fact that my mom had lied about everything. I stuck to saying only the basics about the situation, for mine and my siblings' own privacy, but I laid it all out.

My mom was manipulative about controlling my entire life as soon as she started making the YouTube videos public, and she exploited the last bit of my childhood that I had. She was a homophobe and kicked me out without any warning, not even able to tell me to my face that she didn't want to be contacted about me again. My mom created an entire lie about what happened and gave the internet that version of the story, all while still manipulating my siblings into going along with her lie.

My biggest plea to everyone was that, if they were mad, don't attack my family. Unfollow them, stop watching the videos, make people aware of the situation, but please don't hurt them or trash my family online. As much as my mom infuriated me, she was still taking care of my brother and sister and I didn't want any anger at me taken out on Lani or Dec. They also didn't deserve to see any hate comments. I didn't want them to hurt my siblings the way I had been hurt.

This didn't change my mom, but I was hoping that she could see that this was doing more damage than good for her family.

The video must've really pissed her off, because I got a Snapchat from Milana a few days after it was posted that my mom wanted Lani and Dec to cut all contact with me. They had all gotten new phone numbers and blocked my number. Milana and I had to completely switch over to talking to each other through Snapchat, and we'd become as much of a secret as Taya and I had been. As much as I missed him, Milana and I had both agreed that we didn't think a secret as big as "contacting the sister you mom told you to cut off" was one that Declan could keep. He'd slip up, no fault of his own and then it could just make things worse. So for now, I only talked to Milana.

My communication with Milana had even slowed down though, with how busy I was getting with the end of the school year. It was the week before finals started, and not only did I have my own workload, but also one last essay that I had taken on. Normally, I wouldn't take another essay this close to the end of the year, but for TJ Watson I decided to make the exception. I mean, he had been a loyal "customer" since I started this my sophomore year. Little did I know back then that he was gonna be the friend of my future girlfriend.

"How's it going?" Taya asked, tilting the lid of her laptop screen down as I sighed across the living room one night. It was Pizza Friday and we were waiting for Taya's mom to get back from picking up the order.

"I'm done," I said, staring into the blue light of my own computer screen.

"Done, mentally or, like, literally?" Taya questioned.