How I Survived the Media Guillotine
They didn’t just want the truth.
They wanted blood.
And I gave it to them.
The media circus didn’t knock on my door—it kicked it down. One minute I was trying to hold my life together with trembling hands. The next, I was a headline. A cautionary tale. A meme. A monster. A metaphor.
But here’s what nobody tells you about public shame: it doesn’t arrive as a storm—it creeps in like fog. Slow. Dense. Choking.
It wasn’t just the articles. It was the silence after.
The phone that stopped ringing.
The messages left on “read.”
The employers who disappeared.
The friends who ghosted.
The strangers who decided I was no longer real—just content. Just scandal. Just spectacle.
I watched as my identity was carved up into clickable pieces. They chopped off the context. The history. The heartbreak. The humanity.
What was left?
A caricature with my name.
And I get it. I do.
Outrage is addictive.
Villains are easier to swallow than complexity.
Who has time for nuance when there’s a guillotine to watch?
But this isn’t a sob story.
This is a survival story.
I lived through the humiliation.
I lived through the headlines.
I lived through the moments I Googled myself and wished I didn’t exist.
I lived through the guilt. The therapy. The shame.
I lived through the whispers in coffee shops.
The avoided glances.
The way people said my name like it had thorns.
And somehow, I kept breathing.
Not because I’m strong.
Not because I’m noble.
But because somewhere inside the wreckage, I remembered:
I’m still here.
I’m not the story they wrote.
I’m the story I’m still writing.
So no—this post won’t end with a redemption arc wrapped in a bow.
I’m still bleeding.
But I survived the guillotine.
And now, I speak with a voice they tried to silence.
Not for revenge.
Not for validation.
But because the only thing worse than being publicly shamed…
is letting them decide who you are.
And I refuse.