Ellen is not my hero, but she was.

Ellen was the hero I needed in 1997 to inspire me to look at myself and come out of the closet at 14/15. It was thanks to a lack of social media at the time that I was unaware of the backlash or how it hurt her career.

Ellen's speech at Tulane about the death of her partner while she was in the closet and living in filth, how she turned it into a historic stand-up routine on The Tonight Show was a reminder of the hero she was.

Watching Ellen make people sincerely happy, write books, and do stand-up again felt deserving of someone I once thought a hero.

I'm not sure at what specific point she ran afoul of that heroic character or if it was something that had always been there waiting for this moment.

I believe that Ellen is still the "be kind" woman in her heart and in the hearts of the people closest to her. But I don't believe she's that character in real life to everyone. That is not to say I think she's evil or malevolent; she just is not always kind.

Her show was not cancelled, and she gave a poor address to the public about the allegations against her and her crew. I don't believe she ever could've given a good apology, one that everyone would accept, though she could've tried harder certainly.

She claims they've made changes. The only evidence of that will be what comes next. Will it be evident in her shows? Will her staff continue leaking secrets to the press? We cannot yet know yet.

Do the majority of her fans care? Probably not, honestly.

I hope changes were made, and I hope she apologized to people directly. But I wasn't watching the show before this summer, and I'm not watching it now.

Ellen's trajectory is symptomatic of a larger capitalistic system, and frankly we can do nothing about that trajectory.

I don't think there's a moral imperative to take Ellen down. I think the imperative is to take down systems that always build white people up over BIPOC, which is what protestors across the country are working on. If Ellen went down, another toxic white woman would take her spot.

Our heroes will always fail us if we keep calling them our heroes. Ellen was once my hero but in a specific moment in time when I needed someone to be. I let go of the importance that she remain my hero a long time ago. I'm disappointed, but I don't feel betrayed.

To an extent, I find it relatable when someone just turns out not to be that great or even bad. I don't have the platform Ellen has to hurt as many people as she has. Would she have hurt as many people had her career not found its second wave? I can't speculate.

This is all to say that I don't have to say goodbye to Ellen the Hero because she never existed in reality, only in my young heart. But I sadly do have to say goodbye to Ellen as a woman I never knew and don't care about because I can't and won't. None of us do.