I was browsing the Internet, following one of my favorite essayists the other day, and noticed something off: he hadn't published anything for around a year. Curious, I stumbled more around the Internet to see what news (or gossip) I could find about this not-so-well-known writer, and why he stopped.

I discovered that he was one of the men first outed in the #MeToo movement as a "shitty media man," whose acts of alleged misconduct included rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and retribution against other writers. I went on to see that a litany of women accused him of not only abusing his role as an editor at a prestigious media organization but also treating the people around him with a base level of immense disrespect. In nearly every regard, the essayist I respected and revered so was a flat-out asshole.

At the time, this crushed me. It wasn't that the expectations I had of the writer were shattered - after all, the person always differs from their line of work. Some of my favorite athletes have done awful things in their personal lives, ranging from domestic violence to multiple DWIs. It never is comforting to know that high-profile figures we admire can be so imperfect, after all, it is a painful reminder that they, too, are human.

But this was a writer whose work got me to change the way I thought, whose essays I started to model myself after to improve my writing, whose personal testimonies of addiction and anxiety hit extremely close to home. I started to have an internal battle over whether I could still enjoy the writing and the art, and even revere it, without enabling the dehumanizing actions of the person. That started me on a cascade to realize that, yes, I can still love the writing, but not support the person behind it. This is someone I felt like I really knew and connected with through writing, so it almost felt like finding out a friend, and a good friend, had really done something terrible.

I separate the artist from the art not because it's the best decision, but because I feel like I have to. For someone who believes in giving people the benefit of the doubt, who believes that there aren't bad people in the world (only people who do terrible things), this was the path I had to take to align my belief system.

For me to condemn any artist or celebrity is an act of sanctimonious hypocrisy - how would I look, to the general public, if my whole life and every terrible thing I've ever done were broadcasted to the public? How can I think I'm better than any of these people when I spent so much time glorifying them? Is it wrong that I had this illusion of perfection, or that society in general had this misconception? And is it unfair to public figures to hold them to such a high, unrealistic, God-like standard in the first place?

This isn't to say that we as a society, country, and national community shouldn't seek justice and hold people accountable for their actions. We absolutely should.

Can we separate Bill Cosby from Cliff Huxtable? Yes - one person is real, the other is not. The virtual character has been edited and altered to perfection, while the real one is not, far from it. Will "Manchester by the Sea" still be one of my favorite movies, despite allegations of sexual harassment against Casey Affleck? Yes. I like the movie for itself, not Casey Affleck.

The #MeToo movement and its aftermath made me realize this: I expected role models to be Gods, but they were just people. And people, no matter how good they are, can do terrible things. It also made me reassess why I chose athletes, writers, artists, or any other high-profile figure as role models. At first, it was because of what they did professionally, and how they inspired by how they played, wrote, or made music. Somewhere along the way, I started to see the professional art as a reflection on the person, imposing my own hypothetical values of the kinds of people they would be.

I was not only wrong to do so, but I was doing the art and the movements disservices in doing so, too.