On TikTok, people know me as Emely With An E or Emely Moreno. For years, I have built a following through my name and everything it represents. But once upon a time, I didn’t share my real identity because I worried people I knew in real life would find my account. However, after that backfired, it taught me a crucial lesson: I could never allow anyone to dim my light.

Back in 2009, I began to share parts of my life on YouTube. Inspired by my Colombian culture, I have always loved to captivate and entertain others through singing, dancing, and storytelling. I remember watching my mom, who could mesmerize a room with her charisma, do just that. I wanted to do the same, so with creators like Venetian Princess blowing up on YouTube, my 10-year-old self saw an opportunity. I borrowed my sister’s new Dell laptop, set it up in my room, and started my first channel: Catalina1227.

Once upon a time, I didn’t share my real identity because I worried people I knew in real life would find my account. However, after that backfired, it taught me a crucial lesson: I could never allow anyone to dim my light.

In an attempt to replicate my mom’s light, I would sing in English and Spanish, dance, and film GRWMs; I absolutely loved it. However, my worst fear was that my classmates would find my account. I went to a predominantly white middle school in New Jersey, where I already stuck out.

These videos, which explored my family dynamics, could further prove that we weren’t the same. I felt intimidated by my peers because our cultures were so different. They celebrated Christmas on the 25th, didn’t do novenas, or know about El Niño Dios, or even eat buñuelos. They could freely go to sleepovers or hang out at the park with classmates, and I couldn’t. Their moms didn’t have accents and only spoke one language. My mother spoke three languages: English, Spanish, and Spanglish.

Since I didn’t have the confidence to post as myself, I used a pseudonym, naming myself after the aforementioned Catalina, the lead character in one of my tía’s favorite novelas, Sin senos no hay paraíso. For a while, the only people viewing my content were my family and random people around the United States. At the time, I thought I had gone viral whenever a video hit 1,000 views.

Regardless, my family was proud of me for putting myself out there. Posting super grainy, low-quality videos that I filmed with the Dell’s built-in camera, I exuded pure happiness. Not only had I found a creative outlet that led to me to start taking dance, one of my biggest passions to this day, I felt like I was doing what my mom was so known for but in my own way. I was building my own world as Catalina1227. I didn’t realize then that the bubble would soon burst.

In 2012, about two years after I launched my YouTube channel, I walked into my school’s cafeteria and heard a boy exuberantly singing “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” Immediately I thought, “Wow, he has great music taste.” I didn’t make the connection that it was the same song I sang in my last video until he turned around and said, “Oh, it’s Catalina1227.” That’s when I realized he wasn’t a Barbra Streisand fan. My heart sank. Mortified, I quickly sat down in a corner of the cafeteria, trying to convince myself that only he knew about my secret account.

Of course, I was wrong.

This was middle school, where chisme traveled at lightning speed. By that point, he had shared it with all his friends. When I walked into my next period, my technology class, my classmates pulled up my YouTube videos on their iPhones and class computer monitors. As the sound of my voice echoed through the class dozens of times, they laughed at me. Something that once brought me so much joy instantly became a source of shame.

It was just like a scene out of a movie, except this was real. Unfortunately, my feelings of humiliation and sadness wouldn’t dissipate when the director yelled, “Cut!” I called my dad and asked him to pick me up because I was feeling ill. Truthfully, I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t bear another minute of hearing people mock me. The moment I got home, I went on that same Dell computer and cried as I deleted every single video — about 100 of them. These videos that I had spent countless hours conceptualizing, editing, and filming were now my deepest regret.

I took down Catalina1227 that afternoon and explained to my parents why I would be retiring from YouTube. Although they encouraged me to keep going, reassuring me that my videos were entertaining and that I had made something special, I didn’t dare put myself out there again — even if it was what I loved to do.

As I got older, the feelings of shame turned into anger. I was angry because I had allowed people to take away one of my biggest prides and joy. They had made me feel little, and I had responded by further minimizing myself. A few years later, when I was about 17, I restarted Catalina1227 as a finsta, where only my closest friends and family would see my videos, but something unexpected happened: I built a new community. I started to connect with new friends who remarked that I was funny and entertaining; unlike my classmates, they embraced all of me and encouraged me to unapologetically put myself out there to the world.

As I got older, the feelings of shame turned into anger. I was angry because I had allowed people to take away one of my biggest prides and joy. They had made me feel little, and I had responded by further minimizing myself.

At this point, I was no longer that scared middle schooler who feared showing her true colors. With the support of those within and outside my family, I had gained an overwhelming confidence borne out of the humiliation that I felt the day my classmates discovered Catalina1227, so I took my power back.

I began to post my videos on Instagram, not caring who found them because they were mine. And this time nobody was going to take them away from me. When I created my TikTok in 2020, I made it a point to not hide under anybody else’s name and proudly displayed mine — Emely With An E, aka Emely Moreno. Even though my content no longer revolved around singing and dancing, I used those same qualities I admired in my mom to tell my stories, whether that’s my past experiences as a server, glimpses into surreal moments in my life, or how I resolved issues in the past. I am much more of an open book than I could have dreamed of as a kid. There’s no way I would have had the courage to tell others about the humiliation I endured in middle school.

Now, as my career and name continue to grow, Catalina1227 serves as my guiding light. That little girl in middle school who dreamed of being appreciated for being herself, influences everything I do to this day. I continue to keep my 12-year-old self close because I know there are children going through the same thing, wondering where they belong and whether they are enough as they are.

Just as my mom sparked my desire to entertain, I’m grateful to inspire others to be authentically themselves, no matter how loud or wild or different they feel. Even though I’ve gone by multiple names throughout my life, I am and will forever be proud to be Emely Moreno.