Treadmill

XXII.I

Hey. I wasn't really expecting to have an audience of this size. But, here we are, and here you are, and you found me, and now...here we are.

If you've read all of the posts up until this point, you're probably used to my rambling by now. Or, at least...hopefully you're used to my rambling by now.

I'm struggling with this. With writing everything now that over 50,000 people have read the posts and everything is hard and scary and I've been contacted by so many people about this. I didn't write this for the 'fame' that has somehow come along with it...if you can even call 50,000 people reading a stupid blog 'fame.' I don't think anything about this is fun, or exciting, and although I might have thought differently a few months ago, this is now, and this is...terrifying.

So, if you want to send hate to me or to Kennedy or to anyone involved in anything that I've written about...please don't. I can't handle it, and I'm sure no one else can either. I think that everyone online likes to get worked up about things, they like to see things go viral and then they like to pick apart everything they possibly can about the person that has suddenly become a familiar name to them over the course of a few hours. It's so easy to nitpick at people from behind a screen, but that's not what I'm here to encourage. I wanted to write these posts as a way to unpack everything that happened to me over the past few months, and I wanted to be able to post them in a place I could look back on them in the future. I guess I didn't think about the fact that typing out the name 'Drew Parley' in a blog post would end up leading her army of minions and everyone interested in her to this page after a quick Google search.

I didn't prepare for any of this, so just...take it easy on me. I'm not perfect. I don't think I ever claimed to be perfect through any of these posts. I'm just here, trying to work through things and happening to have a wider audience than people who choose to write things down in a journal.

Show me sympathy or don't, I don't quite care either way. But this is my story to tell, guys. And it's going to go in any number of different directions from here, so I guess you're all welcome to sit back and enjoy the ride with me, or get off now before it gets too high.

><><

Rebecca tossed over in her bed and checked the time on her phone. 2:34 AM. She hadn't slept more than two hours at a time in weeks, and she could feel the toll it was taking on her body. Everything ached, she felt as if she were going to pass out every second of the day from exhaustion, and yet when the time came to actually go to sleep, her brain was wide awake, picking apart everything that happened during the day before, both in person and online.

Online.

She was so past done with everyone's comments. She had started to read them on the blog posts before she realized she didn't want to know what other people thought of her. She had read approximately five comments calling her a 'bitch' and saying that she 'didn't need to air her dirty laundry online' before she disabled the comments on the blog completely. It had taken her a few hours to figure out how to disable comments, but she had figured it out eventually. Of course, the website host didn't let her delete any of the comments that had already been made, so they were there to stay, reminding Rebecca of everything she hated about herself whenever she opened her computer.

But she tried to look past them.

After she had disabled the comments on her blog she had started to gain hundreds of Instagram followers, many of whom took to her most recent picture—one of her and Celeste at Kennedy's last party—to comment everything they thought about her. She had disabled her Instagram comments next, which hurt her a bit to do. Her mother liked to comment on her Instagram pictures whenever she saw them pop up on her feed. But Rebecca couldn't take the comments anymore.