When I was 12, I was just beginning to struggle with severe depression, my anxiety was worsening, my friends left me, I was self-harming all the time, and I was looking out for different resources for reaching out to people like me.
I came to a fanfiction website where I liked to go to read works from pre-teens like me. I had an iPad and insomnia so that is what I came to. There, I met many people. Janessa, Harley, Katarina, Marian, Liv, and so many other people who guided me to finding new escapes from a world I deemed impossible to survive in. While I was there, a dear friend under the username Harleen Napier introduced me to a new outlet: YouTube.
She sent me a video called My American Accent, and she told me that the two guys in the video were like her favorite people ever. They reminded me of our friendship, and she felt the same way. I spent the rest of the night watching videos of these two YouTubers and began to realize that I felt comfortable, happy, accepted, and welcome while watching the videos. I told her that I really enjoyed watching the YouTuber who called himself AmazingPhil. I felt like I knew him. I felt like we were similar. Harley said that I reminded her of him. We were both a bit anxious, shy, and had very similar interests.
Sooner or later I found myself watching all of AmazingPhil's videos that he had posted since 2006. I became very well acquainted with him in my eyes. We were more similar than I'd expected and I felt that I'd gained a new friend who didn't even know of my existence.
But I felt like he did. I felt like we had known each other for a long time. It felt like he knew exactly what I needed to hear or experience every time he posted a new video. I remember being in school and not really talking to any of my far away friends, but when I did- I brought Phil and Dan up like they were good friends of ours. About how as kids, me and Phil both wanted to be meteorologists, about how our favorite movie is Kill Bill, or about how obsessed with lions we both are. There was talk of cats, lasers, Buffy, Quentin Tarantino, System of A Down, Muse and just... fun, happiness, love, acceptance.
My life at school didn't even come to mind when I watched his videos. I could forget about the mean remarks, the spitballs, the time-to-time physical abuse, the teasing, the names, the cutting in the bathroom, the skipped lunches- none of it mattered. I had friends.
Then there was the attack not soon after my 13th birthday. Sexual assault. I still watched his videos whenever I could and talked about him to my new online friends constantly. He was still helping me through what at the time I thought was a healthy secretive relationship with who happened to be my attacker. YouTube was with me as I survived, and sooner down the line of the healing process, things got so out of control that I forgot about any positive aspects of my life. I forgot about Dan, I forgot about Phil, I stopped talking to anyone, and my mind spiraled into suicide mode.
Later on down the line I discovered a new side of myself- I'm pansexual. I like women.
I found Tyler Oakley and he helped me feel like being different mattered. Like I still meant something. As a pansexual, as a patient, as a friend, as a sister, as a survivor. He pulled me out of another deep dark hole. I began watching Phil more, but never as much. I stopped watching Dan completely. Things didn't go back to completely the same.
But it's okay.
YouTube has made me realize who I am, who I can be, and who to aspire to be like.
This post is for three men who guided me to light after such long periods of darkness: Tyler Oakley, Dan Howell, and Phil Lester.
Thank you
Your friend, Lizz Matthews.
