Main Page isn't a place. It’s a performance.
For twenty years, my Main Page was the stage. Miami clubs, packed with strangers who’d never met me, laughing at my jokes about my abuela’s pastelitos or my dad crying at The Lion King commercials. I’d show up, polished, on, the "funny Cuban guy" who’d "got it all together." I kept my stand-up "clean" for a decade—no dark corners, no real pain, just the safe, shiny surface of a joke. It was a mask, but a good mask. People liked it. They paid to see it.
Then the mask cracked. The mental health crisis wasn’t a single moment—it was the slow leak of a tire I’d ignored for years. I stopped laughing with the crowd. I started laughing at the absurdity of just being alive while my insides felt like shattered glass. The "clean" act? It was a lie. I’d given up the messy, real stuff to keep the Main Page looking perfect. I gave up: - The unedited moments: Missing my daughter’s first school play because I was "too tired" to be "vulnerable" on stage. - The quiet grief: Not crying with my mom during chemo because I had to "be the strong one" for the audience. - My own voice: I’d stopped telling the real jokes. The ones that hurt. The ones that were true.
What did I gain? I gained the audience. I gained the spotlight. I gained the illusion that I was "fine." But the Main Page I curated? It wasn’t me. It was a ghost.
The cost wasn’t just the moments I missed. It was the truth I buried. I’d edited out the pain to keep the Main Page "user-friendly." But you can’t edit out grief. It’s not a typo to fix. It’s the foundation.
Now? I write about the real Main Page. The one where the chemo jokes and the crying at commercials live side by side. Where "I laughed. What else could I do?" isn’t a punchline—it’s the only thing that kept me breathing. I don’t hide the cracks anymore. I let the audience see the real edit history: the panic attacks, the quiet moments with my mom, the way my dad still cries at The Lion King.
Was it worth it? Here’s the punchline nobody wanted: Yes. Because the Main Page I’m building now isn’t about being "fine." It’s about being human. It’s about the laughter that comes after the tears, not before. It’s about the truth that hurts so much it becomes the only thing that can heal.
I don’t have a perfect Main Page anymore. I have a real one. And that’s the only one that matters.