I Almost Killed C.R. Hughes

It finally happened. The absolute worst fear of an online writer hoping to create with a certain level of anonymity.

Someone I know personally, found my writing online.

I instantly went into damage control mode. Deactivating my @crhugheswrites Instagram account, Threads account, and X account (although that one had mostly been dormant for years already). I even tried to scrub my Vocal account of anything that could link my writing back to the person I am IRL: changing my profile picture from the bitmoji version of myself to a generic nondescript one, removing the sign offs with my actual first name, and getting rid of the info in my bio that proudly proclaimed my cultural heritage.

Dramatic? Maybe. But nothing compared to my first instinct: Kill C.R. Hughes.

Death of a Writer

Most people who have been following me for some years know that C.R. Hughes is not my actual name; it's a pseudonym I created in order to be able to share my writing online without the fear of scrutiny from those in my personal life. A way to create without the gripping anxiety in my head that someone I work with or go to church with or even just see at the gas station, has seen my work online and now their perception of me is based on how good of a writer I am, or worse - how vulnerable of a writer I am.

So when I received a notification on my writer's Instagram that someone I knew outside of the community I had created online was trying to follow me, I panicked. This person wasn't even someone closely associated to me anymore; just a person I had gone to high school with and hadn't conversed with in years. But somehow, they had found their way from my personal IG to the one I thought I had tucked far enough in the corner of the interwebs. And it got me thinking, how long would it be until someone with fewer degrees of separation to me would find it?

My first thought was to purge the internet of C.R. Hughes completely, including deleting my Vocal account. But as I scrolled through the 80+ stories I had meticulously crafted for the past five years, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I had shared so many parts of myself, resonated with people across the globe, and made a name for myself (however small) that proved that I was born to tell stories. And it got me thinking, what was I so afraid of in the first place?

Confronting the Fear

The truth is, that a lot of the things I have shared through my writing as C.R. Hughes are the most personal, intimate parts of myself. Confessions about my sexuality and deconstructing my faith, expressions of sexual desires and relationship hurts, and really just this feeling of exposing my heart to complete strangers. A lot of it are things that I haven't had the courage or the will to share with those in my personal life.

I'm still a closeted bisexual with only a handful of people in my life knowing that detail about myself, but hundreds of people on the internet have read about my journey of bisexual discovery and affirmed me in a way that I can only imagine many who know me personally would be able to. I'm a former Christian who deconstructed my faith almost four years ago but I still attend church because that is where I have built my most solid community and although I don't agree with the fundamental beliefs of the faith, I still find certain principles of Christianity to be positive forces in my life. How can I explain to someone who has only interacted with me in church or seen me date men my whole life, that this is who I am? And how can I explain to them that it doesn't change me?

And then there's the other side of the coin. What if someone who knows me as C.R. Hughes - the bisexual, open, honest writer - sees that I'm not so fearless outside of cyberspace. How would that affect how they view me? Would they think I'm a liar? Someone fishing for engagement?

The truth is that who I am as C.R. Hughes, in a lot of ways, is more true to who I am than the person I am perceived as in the real world. But my intention is never to deceive anyone; I just want to live. And be allowed to grow, explore, and create in a way that doesn't throw off the balance of my everyday life. C.R. Hughes has given me the power to do that and although it would be nice to merge my online and IRL persona completely someday, for now I am perfectly content with keeping the two separate.

I'll probably reactivate my writing social media accounts at some point, just with a few more precautions. But for now, to anyone who has missed my IG poetry or my random rants on Threads, subscribe to me here on Vocal and hopefully, I'll actually start posting regularly.

Thanks to everyone for all the support these past five years. C.R. Hughes appreciates you and the woman behind the writer appreciates you as well 🫶🏽.

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