Source: https://medium.com/@management_57099/sienna-mae-gomez-reflections-from-an-18-year-old-me-ea0ad79a1b19
Sienna Mae Gomez: Reflections from an 18-Year Old Me
I haven’t even been 18 a whole week yet but the decisions I’ve had to make as a new adult are challenging me in ways that make me wish I could just go back to being a kid.
If you’re here, you probably know about my situation. I’m going to assume that you already know that for the last almost eight months I’ve been fighting a very public battle that involves topics I didn’t know much about until recently: [Trigger warning] — sexual assault, boundaries, consent. For eight long grueling months I’ve been fighting to save friendships, to save business relationships, to save my own mental health. Up until this week, I was so proud of the progress I made, like being on my phone less and learning to surf and cook with friends, and value things that really matter.
Four days after turning 18, my former friend Jack Wright — the one I’ve been tangled with in a toxic web of accusations and internet “tea” — posted a 17-minute video about me. Yesterday, five days past turning 18, I had to say “okay” to a media statement written by my publicists in response to that video. Shortly after that, my legal team sent his legal team a letter threatening a lawsuit for defaming my character because that “is the best next step to clear your name.” I’m sure it’s all hitting the media now.
I’VE NEVER BEEN SO SCARED IN MY LIFE.
I thought turning 18 would be amazing and so far it honestly just sucks.
I have three choices that I can see: 1) go read the millionth “I hope you kill yourself” message in my DMs 2) let my well-meaning parents and team dictate next steps and tie us up for what could be years in a legal battle with people who I once considered my closest friends or 3) write down everything from my heart and use my newfound adult status to take accountability and share the whole truth with anyone who will listen.
To be honest, it’s hard not to choose number one and to actually follow it through. I told my parents last night that I just want to die. I’m so tired of fighting. I’m so tired of seeing the hate and people taking sides. My heart hurts for my friends, my family and people I associate with who are getting bullied on their own social media accounts just because they know me. So I’m going to choose number three for the sake of the people I love. I’m just going to get real and bare my soul and have faith and trust that I will land where I’m meant to be.
The beginning of “Jack & Sienna”
When I was just 16 years old, one of my TikTok videos went viral on social media, then another then another. I asked my hometown friend James Wright to do my first big interview with me in Los Angeles. He was out of town so he asked his twin brother Jack to go with me. I was friends with Jack but knew James better — both of them had blown up on TikTok a few months earlier than me. From that day on, my life would never be the same.
Jack introduced me to people in LA, to new friends that I had been watching online for months, to a new fast-paced lifestyle that was so different than the one we lived in our small town. We instantly connected. He was my person. We got each other safely home after parties. We had each other’s backs. People noticed a spark between us and our videos together went viral. Suddenly, we were America’s favorite teenage “ship” and it all happened so fast that neither one of us really knew what it meant.
We were thrown into a crazy, exciting relationship because the public demanded it. We couldn’t make enough content together. If we went just a few days without the other in our videos, the press would run stories like, “Did Jack and Sienna break up?” and people would comment things like, “If they don’t get married I don’t believe in love.” Major companies were reaching out with brand deals for us and Jack even switched agents to make it easier for work opportunities. Somewhere along the way, and in a very confusing state of not knowing what was fake and what was real, I started to fall in love with him.
Hype House
In December 2020 after four incredible months of TikTok fame, more fun than I’ve ever had, and what seemed like the perfect life, I got a call from the producers of the Hype House show asking me to be one of the featured influencers headlining the series. They also told me they didn’t plan to have Jack in a lead role. To me, that felt wrong. He was the one who introduced me to all those people and I wasn’t even an official member of the Hype House (Thomas Petrou asked me to join but my parents said no). So I decided to be on the show but only if Jack was in a lead role too. They agreed.
From February through April 2021, we filmed for the show. They filmed us both in our hometown. They filmed scenes with our family and friends at my house and at his. They even filmed us in Hawaii!
While a lot of it was fun, what wasn’t fun is that producers and other Hype House members kept pressing us to define what we were. Two 17-year olds being pressured again and again to answer questions like, “Are you more than friends?” and “What do you love most about him/her?” It was so confusing and emotional as we both started to realize that uncovering the “truth” behind our relationship — which we agreed not to put a label on — was a major storyline on the show. The more they pressed me on camera, the more emotional I got because I wasn’t sure if we were friends or more. We would agree to be just friends and then he would gift me expensive or even matching jewelry or plan elaborate outings. We would talk in a quiet place and say we were just friends and then the next day be making out with each other for the cameras. I didn’t know what was being set up by producers and if it was real or fake. I told him I loved him and he said he loved me too. I would ask if he wanted to be more than friends and he would say, “not yet.” Rejection isn’t comfortable, but it’s honest. The show had to go on so I kind of just went with it.
Hawaii and “the video”
In May, we took another trip to Hawaii. Though Hype House filming had wrapped, at this point, the internet was going crazy for our content, especially since we hadn’t posted a lot during filming because it had to be exclusive to the show. We both felt pressure. I wasn’t originally supposed to be on this trip but to be clear, he said I could come a few days before going. Looking back now, I see that it was to make content. Something on this trip was different. Everywhere we went he introduced me as his “girl” but then take pictures and blatantly flirt with other people. I was jealous, but more than that I was confused — why was I here? Why was he introducing me as his counterpart, telling me to wait patiently to be together, if he didn’t really want any of it?
And then — without producers and cameras around for the first time in months — it really hit me. He liked me when he needed me for a video or for work, but he didn’t like me otherwise. I asked him to make a video with me explaining to our fans that we were truly just friends. I told him that if he didn’t have real feelings for me, I wanted to set the record straight publicly about our relationship (as explained and shown in my response video from last year). He told me we had brand partnerships riding on our fake one, and that it wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t believe that someone who I had created with, laughed with, and cried with could so easily disregard my feelings for the sake of money. He apologized and I appreciated that, but I needed time away from him and our public persona to think and heal.
So I went home and took time away from him and his family. I received multiple texts from James, Jack’s twin, asking why I wasn’t responding to them. Two weeks later, they started posting Instagram stories targeted at me. One day later, their friend Mason put up a tweet implying that I physically and mentally abused Jack. A few days after that their friend Lachlan released a video taken from a November 2020 party showing Jack and me kissing. He narrated the whole thing to make it look like it was something it wasn’t. To be clear, James took the video as a joke on his Snapchat seven months earlier and they decided to resurface it. I would like to think that neither Mason nor James realized the impact that their tweets and the taken-out-of-context-video would have. Though they took it all down, it really didn’t matter. The damage had been done.
My character became a topic of public opinion. I lost friends. I lost brand deals. My reputation was damaged. I went from being one of the most loved girls on the internet to one of the most hated. I went quiet. I lost my will to live and had to be saved.
I spent months healing and getting better. My team asked Hype House producers to remove me from the show so that I did not have to re-live the online bullying in light of the crazy “Team Jack” and “Team Sienna” sentiment online as they knew people would pick apart every interaction between us. Netflix also did not want to be liable for my mental health. That’s why I wasn’t in the show. That’s why producers had to figure out what to fill without months of Jack and Sienna footage. I’m sure the Hype House members are mad at me; I would probably be mad at me too. I’m sorry, especially to the cast and crew who worked so hard on this show.
Jack: Setting the record straight
I’ve had three relationships in my life. My first boyfriend was so sweet to me and although I was just turning 14 when I started dating him, he was supportive, and caring and communicated his feelings, like how he preferred my time over public affection. In his YouTube video, J