One state.
Then another.
I slept in parking lots, truck stops, rest areas, national park lots, church lots, anywhere I could feel halfway safe.
I lived on peanut butter crackers and gas station coffee and the kind of numbness that only comes when your entire future implodes and you don’t have the luxury of sitting down to mourn it.
At first, I waitressed to make ends meet. Little dive bars and coffee shops. Places where I worked for tips and maybe a meal.
And in my spare time, I filmed little clips just to keep myself occupied.
“Hi guys,” I’d said into my phone one morning, sitting in a rest stop outside Ohio with mascara smudged under my eyes and a stale muffin in my lap. “So today I’m in, uh, honestly, I don’t even know where I am.”
I smile despite myself at the memory.
It was a mess.
I was a mess.
But it was real.
And for some insane reason, people liked that.
They connected.
They liked that I wasn’t polished or perfect.
They liked that I was curvy and tired and trying.
They liked that I could review a roadside pie stand in one minute and talk about emotional recovery in the next.
They liked my laugh and my mistakes and the way I’d cry over sunsets and then roast a terrible motel in the same video.
“Plus Size Life with Esme and a Van,” I say out loud now, smiling a little.
Catchy enough.
Now it’s my actual life.
My job.
My career.
Me.
I travel.
I review products.
I meet and interview new people.
I take videos of landscapes and food and artisans and flea markets, and weird little towns that would never have crossed my radar otherwise.
I post outfit links and snack reviews and mental health ramblings, and deep thoughts while parked beside rivers in Vermont or red rock in Arizona.
I’ve got producers now, and brand deals, and a manager who says things like “lean into your authenticity” and “the audience loves your resilience.”
I finally made something of myself.
