For those of you in the English speaking community who don't know, a Salvadoran streamer named Komanche was confirmed dead yesterday. He had recently been accused of sexual assault, an allegation he denied publicly. Friends and fans didnt care to listen, and turned their backs on him. Now the accuser has deleted tweets, and many are now seeing the truth for what it was. I met him at TwitchCon and liked him alot. We hung out that weekend and I saw who he was, a guy that just wants everyone to laugh. When the world turns on you before you've had a chance to answer, you start wondering whether anything you say will ever change how people see you. You can explain yourself and still be left wondering whether anyone actually heard you, or whether they've already decided what kind of person you are. Allegations like these follow you into every part of your life. You can be walking down the street and catch someone looking at you, and immediately wonder whether they're thinking: “rapist” “monster” You hide yourself from the world, become ashamed of not just who you are but the person you're going to become, because you feel there's been a death wish casted on you and every moment of your life will bare it. Then you go home, and it follows you there too, and in your sleep, you have nightmares of people abandoning you, leaving you. And as you wonder what you did to deserve this, and need a shoulder to cry on, those who will still answer you will tell you "just move on". I haven't had a second in the past year where I haven't wondered whether my parents and family still love me the same way, or whether they think of me differently now. This goes not just for them, but anyone who i've ever been friends with. I'm ashamed to message friends Merry Christmas or even wish them a happy birthday. I know that fear doesn't tell me what they actually believe. But having to wonder that about people who have known you your entire life is something I don't know how to explain. And having false allegations broadcasted live to millions as other creators feed off it, and go with the narrative before even bothering to hear yours makes it impossible to get away from. Your entire career, everything you worked for, starts to feel like a distant dream. Achievements that just yesterday were the proudest moments of your life become things you're almost embarrassed to look back at. You look at old pictures of yourself being happy and remember what it felt like to be proud of who you were, without wondering what everyone else thought. Your past becomes something you want to run away from, but when you try to picture your future, you're afraid it will feel just as bad. You want to move on, but you don't know where you can go that this won't follow. I worry about my false allegations following me into a family I haven't even had yet. What if I have a son someday, and someone recognizes me at his soccer game? What if their opinion of me becomes the reason they won't let their kids play with my son? What if the woman I marry has friends who have already decided who I am before they've ever met me? Does she spend her life having to explain why she's with me? These are things I think about when I try to picture my future. I worry about people I love having to answer for what strangers believe about me. Someone living with that much isolation can become so overwhelmed that death starts to feel like the only escape. That's how hard it can become to see that a future is still possible. That's why I stand by calling for criminal accountability when someone is proven to have fabricated allegations and their actions amount to a crime. Anyone making an accusation that serious has a responsibility to understand what is at stake. The sympathy the accuser receives in a day and attention cannot justify decades of damage to another person's life. The attention moving on doesn't mean the person accused gets their life back. I wish he'd called. I wish I could've been there for him. And I wish I'd known. RIP Komanche.