In hindsight you can say that I was calm before the storm. I hadn’t quite mentally prepared myself to what it really entails showing your face on the Internet in front of so many people.
Since I had no public social media it didn’t even notice the commotion until I asked Nate if people liked the new daily vlog. I did this every single day, since I knew he loved to talk about the funny comments he got and generally discuss topics and points that viewers made in the comment section.
He was as usual on his laptop and I was making tea in his kitchen as I asked him. I wasn’t near him but I could immediately feel the tension emitting from him as he heard my question.
“I guess… I mean, they’re…” he couldn’t seem to construct a coherent sentence and I was guessing that he was weighing his options. We had agreed never to lie to each other under any serious circumstances and Nate looked like he was considering if this fell under that category.
“Didn’t they like it?” I asked worried and tried to remember what he had been filming yesterday. Then it struck me, I didn’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I had been in yesterday’s video which he had just posted. I probably had to do with me.
“Is it about me?” I asked sternly and Nate looked at me with the most adorable puppy eyes he could muster. Normally, I would fall for it and give up on the topic if it was just something minor but I got the feeling that this might be more major.
“Nate…” I said with my toughest voice.
He sighed in defeat and just shook his head. “It’s really nothing,” he said.
“Well, if it nothing why don’t you just show me…” I said and made a move to grab the laptop out of his lap but he was much faster than me and had it shut down and out of my reach.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said calmly and I could see the sympathy in his eyes.
“Nate, you better give me that laptop,” I demanded.
“I don’t think you should look at the comments. People are mean.”
“I know that,” I said but maybe I really didn’t. I usually never put myself in a position to get judged. I hated it. If I could I would rather please everyone and never make anyone disappointed. Maybe I wasn’t too good with handling criticism but Nate couldn’t just hide it from me.
“You’ll be upset if you read them and I don’t want you to get upset, Abbs. Please, listen to me,” he said with those pleading eyes.
“Nate,” I said calmly and composed myself. “You can’t hide the reality from me. I got on camera voluntarily and now I’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
“It’s just you shouldn’t have to deal with it. It’s no big deal that people leave hate, I get it all the time but you wouldn’t be able to read past it and see all the good thing people wrote about you. Like how happy and cute we looked together. How amazingly beautiful you looked. How kind and honest you were.”
“Hate?” I said with a tiny voice and hated the fact that I could hardly hear all the nice comments Nate mentioned after that. Had people really left hate messages? How could they hate me? They didn’t even know me. I was furious and on the verge of tears at the same time. I wanted to scream.
“See, you’re getting all upset. Let’s just forget about it,” Nate suggested and went to hug me. I had never been able to reject the comfort of his touch and neither was I this time. I felt relief as I had his arms around me but I knew that it didn’t solve the problem.
“Nate. You’ve been doing this for years and I get that you probably know how to handle it but I’m new to all of this. Three months ago no one knew who I was, now thousands of people has seen me and have an opinion of me. That terrifies me. I’m still partly that shy girl that hides behind a camera, never wanting to reveal something about herself. I care what people think of me a lot, probably even too much. You need to understand that. I can’t just ignore people if they write something about me. I’ll have to know,” I said quietly.
I squeezed Nate a bit harder and he reciprocated.
“You’re right, I don’t get it,” he said and I immediately detached myself from him.
“What?”
“Wait! I mean I want to understand but I can’t. Why would you put yourself through that? I doesn’t make any sense, Abbs!”
“I’m sorry, Nate but I’m going to go now. Back to my flat. I need to get away from you and you need to try and be in my shoes. You know a lot about me, including my insecurities.”
I got up and left his flat and left him standing in the middle of the living room with his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide and saddened.
We had never really had a serious argument before, usually we just bickered for a while about something stupid. If it was an argument about who was right, we would just google the answer or ask a third party. But mostly we saw eye to eye on most topics but social media had always been a danger-zone.
Nate loved social media and spend a lot of time on it. I understood why, he interacted with his many internet friends and viewers and stayed updated on pop culture but that had never fallen naturally to me. I didn’t feel compelled to post where I was or what I was doing or who I was with all the time. Nate had gotten a lot better when we were together but he still loved social media and used it a lot.
I knew that he received hateful or just plain creepy comments and tweets all the time and he had in fact learnt to filter them. I never quite understood why people did write stuff like that to him since it was obvious he was an amazing guy.
With my head still spinning with too many thoughts, I arrived at Emma and I’s flat. I hadn’t even got my key with me and Emma had to open the door for me.
“Hey,” she said in the kindest voice when she saw me standing there. She was being way to nice, she never greeted me like this.
“What’s up with you?” I asked.
“Nothing. Is there something wrong?” she asked and we both sat down on the sofa.
“Nate and I had a fight,” I said and then paused. “I think at least. Actually, I’m not sure.”
“A fight? But you guys never fight? You’re the perfect couple,” Emma said confidently.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No, we’re not but thanks. He’s the most amazing guy I know and I love him but sometimes it’s not a dance on roses.”
“Is it about the new video?” Emma asked carefully.
“Yeah, actually. How did you know that?”
Emma looked like she had been caught with her fingers in the cookie jaw. “Just a guess.”
“No, it was not.”
“Okay, it’s just… there is a lot of comments on that daily vlog and a lot of them are about you. And not all of them are nice. But they’re just stupid, jealous teenage girls.”
I got up and walked over to my laptop and clicked onto Nate’s channel.
“No, Abbey. You shouldn’t do that, you’ll just get upset,” Emma said.
My mouth fell to the floor. That was exactly the same thing that Nate had told me. Did they both think that I was a little girl that couldn’t handle adversity?
“I’m a grown woman and if I want to look at the comments, I will,” I said stubbornly and clicked on the video and scrolled down.
The first comment that met me had a lot of both up-votes and down-votes and a massive amount of sub-comments.
“Who is that girl? She is to skinny, annoying and stupid. GET ANOTHER GF. Shes a golddigger and attentionwhore. She just want Nate for his money and fame. Dump her. Just like Marcia to Pewds.”
I felt physically sick reading a comment with so many grammatical errors. Most of the viewers had to be in school but still they seemed to lack the knowledge of basic English.
I tried to ignore the tightness in my chest and instead asked: “Who’s Marcia? That name sounds so familiar.”
“Oh, she’s a YouTuber and Pewdiepie’s girlfriend. They have been together for years but since Pewds has close to 30 million subscribers, people think that she’s only with him because he’s rich and famous. Which is bullshit because when they got together none of them had any money.”
“Is Pewdiepie’s name Felix?” I asked.
“Yeah!” Emma nodded. “I’m so glad you finally have some basic YouTube knowledge. How did you know?”
“Nate talked about us going to see Felix and Marcia. They live in Brighton, I believe.”
“Yeah, they do! God, you’re so lucky, Abbs. You know what I would give to meet them!”
I laughed at Emma’s enthusiasm. I almost forgot the harsh words ringing in the back of my mind, almost.
“So people think I’m a gold-digger and an attention whore?” I asked.
“Some say that but mostly it’s really nice comments about how nice you look and how happy Nate and you seem. You should scroll further down.”
“I don’t think I want to. There are more ‘hate-comments’ too aren’t there?” I asked.
Emma looked sad and nodded.
Damn, Nate had been completely right. I did not want to look at YouTube comments if they were mean for no reason. I had even addressed that in my short appearance in the video. I was scared that I wouldn’t dare be on camera again.
I spend the entire afternoon sorting out my recent photos and uploaded a new blog post with photos from London Eye. I was annoyed to find that comments regarding my relationship also appeared on my post and frustrated shut the laptop down.
I heard a gentle knock on my door and to my surprise saw Nate standing there with that ever charming smile on his face.
“How’s my favourite girl doing?”
I felt the corners of my mouth turn upwards into a smile, I could never really be mad at that boy for an extended period of time.
“Better, but you were right,” I confessed. “I shouldn’t have looked at the comments.”
“Was it bad?” he asked and sat down on the bed next to me and put his arm around me.
“I only got to read one but that was more than enough. I don’t like the fact that people that doesn’t even know me are making all sorts of assumptions about who I am.”
“I know that it’s a big issue for you but what I tried to say to you at my flat, wasn’t that you shouldn’t care what people thought. You simply still need to learn to differentiate between those who matter and those who don’t. The opinion of your friends and family is very important, while people that don’t know you don’t matter at all. If they like you great, if they hate you – ignore them. Still the most important person to care about and keep happy is yourself.”
I snuggled into his turtleneck sweater. “Do you have to be right all the time?”
Nate laughed and gently kissed my cheek. “Yes, but it’s rarely since I’ve been with you. Often you’re too smart for your own good but you’re still learning how to behave socially.”
“Indeed, you are right, my dear boyfriend. I should only care about the people that know and love me and the most important thing is that you know that I’m not a gold-digger and an attention whore.”
“That’s what you read?” Nate asked and frowned. He looked angry but it dissolved quickly.
“You’re the fastest thing from materialistic, that the right term, right? And you hate attention. That is basically your complete opposite.”
“Want to go out tonight?” I asked.
Nate’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and he smiled widely. It wasn’t often that I suggested that we went out together but I could go for a cozy dinner at one of the local restaurants.
“That sounds awesome! I’ll just pop back to mine and get a dressshirt and change to jeans and then I’ll pick you up here, deal?”
I nodded and followed Nate to the door.
“Emma, I need your help! I’ve got a date with Nate and I want to be fancy tonight!” I called and Emma materialized besides me in no time.
We went through her closet and we finally decided on a knee length ash grey form-fitted dress, that I wasn’t sure would be flattering on me but Emma insisted. I had to admit that I did look quite nice.
Emma found my red wedges and made me put them on. I combed through my hair while Emma did a subtle smoky eye and added mascara. I put on Tanya Burr’s lip-gloss Let’s Travel the World, which I had bought as I had seen in it Superdrug after I had met Tanya and I had loved both the name and the colour.
I was looking at my reflection in the mirror, while I was waiting for Nate, as my door slowly crept open. I turned around to see Emma with a vlogging camera in her hands and immediately recognised it as Nate.
“Emma! What are you doing! Turn that off!” I demanded as I felt the heat rush to my cheeks making me blush.
“No, I want to show how beautiful you look,” she said and quickly turned the camera to face her and added: “You better keep this in, Nate!” before focusing on me again.
“C’mon, Abbey. Let’s do an outfit of the night,” Emma said.
“No,” I whispered but I was pretty sure the camera didn’t catch that.
“Fine, then I’ll do it. The dress is from Topshop and the eye make-up is made by using colours form the Naked Pallet 1, on her lips are Tanya Burr’s Let’s Travel…”
“What is going on in here?” Nate said as he appeared behind Emma in the doorway.
“Nate, help me,” I said and jumped past Emma and hid by hugging Nate.
“It that my camera?”
“Yes, I wanted to show everyone Abbey’s outfit but she’s being resistant,” Emma complained. I turned around and stuck my tongue out at her, briefly forgetting about the camera before I saw it beside her.
“Let me see, honey,” Nate said and draped me away from him with his hand firmly in mine.
“You look gorgeous,” he commented, causing me to blush further and have the happy grin on my face, that I got every time he was sweet.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said looking directly into the camera and put my hand over the lens.
“You’re going to let me keep that in?” Nate asked carefully.
I sighed. “Why not?”
Emma and Nate high-fived and I had a feeling that they had been plotting that stunt. I didn’t really mind, I had been rather funny when I had gotten over the camera in the room.
We went on to have a wonderful night, chatting and really catching up on all of our travels. It seemed like we had talked and talked non-stop for the last past days but we just kept having funny stories to tell each other and never had a boring moment. It was one of the nicest evenings I had had in a long time.
Only once Nate pulled out the camera and didn’t film for more than 30 seconds or so and he finished turning the camera at me. I just smiled and waved to his audience while I tried to remember that I was a good person and it was only a minority that didn’t like me.
Practice makes perfect and I was becoming more and more determined to practice being on camera. I wanted to, not just for Nate but also for me, it would be a huge personal victory for me.
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Hope you liked the new chapter. Abigail is constantly becoming more brave and confident. Next chapter you can read as she tries to handle going to Summer In The City with Nate. :) As always feedback is greatly appreciated. :)