Is You Okay? (12 page)

The flip side of growing up and figuring yourself out is learning that there are some things in this life you cannot change. One of those things is how people feel about you. People will judge you for aspects of your character that are either not your fault, not in your control, or the worst of all: you'll get judged for those critical parts of your personality that you couldn't change even if you tried. That's not an easy
thing to deal with. The best way I have found for dealing with those times is to do something Mrs. Stuckey should have done all those years ago: look in the mirror. I think about the times I've been a hater or been hated on, and I ask myself:
What aspects of the other person's character was I afraid of? What aspects of my character were
they
afraid of? Do any of those things need to change?
Can
they change?

I'm a passionate person—it's who I am. I am the daughter of Ozell Green. I was a black girl in a mostly white private school in the American South in the 1970s—and no, I had no say in the matter. Given all that, is it any wonder I have trouble trusting new people and tolerating fake people? Yes, I can be skeptical sometimes. Can those things about me change? Sure! Should they?

I don't know.

All these things are part of what defines me as a person, but they don't define me completely, even if that is all people want to see when they judge me. There is nothing I can do about that.
Haters gonna hate.
You can let it get you down and eat you up, or you can do what Princess Elsa of Arendelle says and let it go,
LET IT GOOOO!

I choose to let it go. It's what helped me get over
The Tonight Show
thing and onto making more YouTube videos so quickly. It's how I avoid drowning on all the haterade that
can get poured into the comments sections of my channel and those of my friends. And in early 2015, it was how I didn't let myself get affected when Rob Lowe slammed me on Twitter after I interviewed President Obama. He posted a picture of me from the Cereal Challenge and then wrote:

“Hold up. Is it true that a woman who eats cereal out of a bathtub gets to meet with the President and the Prime Minister of Isreal does not?”

I've been around the block enough times to know Rob Lowe's issue wasn't with me. I'm sure he wasn't questioning my career path, or my life choices. Maybe he was afraid of how media is affecting politics, or how the Internet is influencing our culture, or maybe his toilet seat wasn't warm enough when he woke up that morning in his giant Malibu house as (still) one of the most beautiful men in show business. I don't know, I've never met the man. His tweet stung for a hot minute, I'm not going to lie, but once I let it go I was able to see the bright side—
at least my haters are beautiful
—and then turn the other cheek.

After that, I teased him about his spelling (
Isreal?
Really, Rob?), but I didn't poke fun at his men's skin care line, like a lot of mean-spirited people do on Twitter. He's passionate about it, so he should be proud of it. It can be scary to try
something new like that when everyone expects something else from you.

Maybe one day I'll get to meet him and we will laugh about this together, and then he'll remember me when there's a role available in his next Hallmark Lifetime movie for a sassy, self-assured black woman who takes Jesus's message to heart and turns the other cheek when confronted with prejudice by an incredibly handsome white man who isn't very good at spelling.

That's how you have to look at things if you want to be happy and do cool stuff in this life. You can't let yourself get distracted by negativity, no matter where it comes from.

In school it can be students
or
teachers. At home it can be family or neighbors. Online it can be commenters, and trolls. In life, it can be anyone . . . even Rob Lowe. You just have to remember that it almost always has nothing to do with you. It's always about them.

Do you want to be the person who, at ninety years old, is, like, “I wish I'd kept playing the trombone” and regrets quitting it because someone else said it was “gay” or “dorky”? Do you want to be the person who maybe ends up married to
the wrong partner because you let an overbearing parent or friend bully you into dumping someone who might have been “The One”? Imagine where Jay Leno would be if he'd listened to his haters—people who'd booed him offstage, or agents who said he wasn't funny enough, or people on Twitter who called him names when he wanted to come back to
The Tonight Show
. Good Lord, imagine where a woman like Carol Burnett would be if she let all the sexist haters in the 1960s prevent her from breaking new ground for women in comedy! Imagine where
I'd
be if I cared about all the knocks . . .

I believe in positivity and looking forward. I don't want to think about what could have been, actually—I want us all to think about what could be. The only thing standing in the way of that is a little hard work, a little faith, and maybe a couple haters. But forget about the haters.

Haters gonna hate,
it's what they do. Don't worry about them—you just do you.

     
Q:
  Who is your celebrity crush and why?

     
A:
  It was One Direction because they are all so beautiful, but now I don't know anymore. Dang it, Zayn, why'd you have to go and do your solo thing? Now One Direction is
None
Direction! Sad face emoji.

Since discovering YouTube in 2008 I have been blessed to find myself among a large, supportive group of happy, creative silly people whom I get to call my friends.

There's Colleen Ballinger-Evans, and her husband, Josh Evans (a.k.a. JoshuaDTV); Jenna Marbles; Joey Graceffa; iJustine;
Kingsley; and Heart Defensor. We come from all over the country, we're different ages and races and orientations, but we also share a deep desire to have fun, make entertainment, and connect with people. We're like coworkers, all part of this big crazy company and our bosses are . . .
you guys,
the fans. Many of us were fans of each other's before we were friends, so really our friendships are a giant mutual admiration society.

I can't speak for them, but for me, our relationships only began to develop when I learned to accept my truest self, and let myself walk the paths that had opened in front of me. Once I did so, it was like all these people I would have otherwise never met were just waiting there, eager to join up with other people walking their own paths.

It isn't always that way, though. Sometimes the path is lonely for stretches, especially at the beginning. You ever post a video and have it get zero views? Ever sit there and watch the comments
not
roll in? That's lonely. It'll make you doubt everything. Other times, the path itself isn't lonely, you just manage to wander off it for a while and get lost. I have a few friends who are okay with that—they like being by themselves, out exploring, doing other things. They look
forward to their quiet alone time. If that sounds like you, well then, you're in luck, because it means you don't need to go searching for companionship and you don't need to grab hold of every person you meet along the way and go skipping down the path arm in arm like Dorothy and her friends in
The Wizard of Oz
. It's okay if you'd rather be like Dora and Diego, bouncing around the world having adventures like wonder twins. Or you can fly solo for as long as you're happy. It doesn't matter.

Still, whether you're a loner, or the life of the party, or somewhere in between, you need to find that one person who understands you better than anyone else, maybe even better than you know yourself. This person can be a boy or a girl, a friend or a family member, a teacher or an employer—in fact, they can come from anywhere (like a hater). They can even change over time as you get older, go away to school, move, or get a new job. The only thing that matters is that this person appreciates you for who you really are, because this is going to be the person you rely on when those lonely stretches get too lonely. Their voice is going to be the one you follow when you've wandered too far off the path and you are trying to find your way back.

The first person who helped me back to the path I should have been on was Abby, which shouldn't surprise you considering how much I've talked about her (and the fact that her name is the title of this chapter).

Abby didn't do all this for me intentionally—unless she is a secret crazy baby supergenius, that is! No, she just accepted me for
who I was
.

On the first day of kindergarten, when all the little white-walkers were scaring me, Abby came over and said, “Hi, do you want to play blocks with me?” And with that we went over into the corner, where all the toys were stored, and played until class started. I latched onto Abby like a koala bear and didn't let go for five years.

From kindergarten through fourth grade, we did everything together. We ate lunch together, played blocks together, sat next to each other, colored together. I never missed a day of school in my life (
perfect
attendance), but if Abby was ever absent, I would just sit there by myself, in my chair, waiting for school to be over or Abby to walk through the door—whichever came first.

Except for little things like “getting taller,” and “learning how to read and write,” Abby never changed as we grew up together. We could be goofy, play piano and sing songs, or just play by ourselves for hours. When you're young, and
different for reasons out of your control, it can be hard sometimes to explain why you might feel unsettled. You're not smart enough or aware enough to work out what's going on. In retrospect, finding a friend like Abby gave me my first experiences
embracing
what made me unique, instead of trying to cover it up, and in the process it actually made me feel normal, and calm. I think it's why I loved school—I got to see Abby, so I got to be me.

When Abby's parents took her out of school at the end of fourth grade, I struggled to find new friends, and I struggled to trust people generally, which made making friends even harder. I worried that if I went full-koala, I might wake up one day and my new friend would be gone, just like Abby was. I wasn't sure if I was ever going to have a connection like that with someone ever again.

If the last four years at Calvary Presbyterian weren't going to feel like one giant long spelling test, I had to find my next Abby. I didn't know that consciously at the time—I just wanted another best friend. For a couple years it felt like it would be Patrice. We spent a lot of time together at school, and as the first person to ever come over to my house for a sleepover, that alone gave her a special place in my heart. You remember Patrice, right? The girl my mom accidentally tried to boil and peel like a Gulf shrimp before turning her into a sandwich. Yeah, that didn't go so well.

My struggles didn't end with a sunburned friend unfortunately.

The loneliest times for me were during high school and college. Sure, I had friends in both places—I just never had that one person I could really put my trust in.

In high school, my parents kept me in the Calvary Presbyterian system, but Calvary Presbyterian High School was
even smaller
than the grade school. Not only did I have fewer potential friends to choose from, but they were the same ones I already knew and had already not fully connected with.

You would think after nine years as one of the only black students at a small private school, my parents might have given me a chance to spread my wings and meet more people in a larger, more diverse environment, say, the public high school in our neighborhood? Nope. My mom and dad were very concerned that if I attended the public school, I'd be around kids from the neighborhood who were less well off than me—they were kids who knew I was Ozell Green's daughter, and they might hate on me for it. They were worried I'd hear things like:

“Oh you Dr. Green's daughter—you think you got something?”

“You think you special because your daddy got a store?”

“Lil private school girl gotta go to the big school now, huh?”

Their fears for me were palpable: “GloZell, those public school kids from the neighborhood would have eaten you alive,” my dad told me once when I asked him why they chose Calvary for us.

(Thanks for the ringing endorsement, Pops!)

“You were soft, baby,” my mom agreed.

“We knew Calvary wouldn't be easy, but we knew you wouldn't have to deal with as many of those mean girls either,” my dad said.

“And if you did well,” my mom said, “and made something of yourself out of that private school—well, we knew that you'd earned it, and would be fine the rest of the way.”

They were right—both of them—of course. They were
parents
.

I started at community college in Orlando to be near my dad, and then, as I've said, I basically became a commuter student
to the University of Florida after his second amputation and he could no longer work at the pharmacy day to day.

College was only two hours away, so every Friday Dad would pick me up from school, and then the following Monday he would drive me back. I'd love to be able to tell you how he made the drive—having no legs and all—but I'm still not sure how he did it. All I can teach you is how to ride in a car being driven by a man with no legs: HANG ON TIGHT.

Was this arrangement ideal for making friends or making it home in one piece without having a heart attack? No, but like I've said: no excuses. You have to do what has to be done, even if it means riding in the family van with a man who can't feel the pedals with his prosthetic legs, and who once got his shoe stuck under the accelerator in rush-hour traffic.

People talk about all the crazy times they had living away at college, but very few of them can top some of the experiences I've survived—like driving home on the highway at full speed, then hearing a rattle followed by a loud thump, and then turning around to see your dad's wheelchair fly out the back of your van straight into traffic.