“Every once in a while there’s a unicorn … A creator doing something so new, so fresh that it makes me question my own creativity,” said one of Mills’ idols, Casey Neistat, in a video he posted. “(Elle) is someone who is, I think, pushing the boundaries of YouTube.”

“That’s when it really, really blew up. I was getting opportunity after opportunity,” said Mills. “I was stressed. Right after the coming out video, I was like, I can’t just post any other video next because now everyone’s watching. So I started pushing myself to the limit.”

In her next video, to prove she wouldn’t be the last in the family to wed, Mills legally married her sister’s boyfriend in Las Vegas. The act angered her mother and resulted in a months-long annulment process. “That was me in the mentality of like, I need to go bigger or else this is going to fall on my face,” said Mills.

“So I started saying yes to everything. I was doing magazine shoots, interviews, a tour, meetings. It was four to five months of never being home and still trying to pump out videos.” During that time, Mills gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and hit the one million mark. She landed on newscasts. She won a Shorty Award for “Breakout YouTuber” of the year.

Then in the spring of 2018, Mills hit a traumatic breaking point. It was 9 a.m., and she had just returned from a convention in Florida. Stressed out and panicking, she started drinking, and uploaded a video tirade to Twitter.

“This is all I ever wanted. And why the f–k am I so f–king unhappy?” Mills yelled. “It doesn’t make any f–king sense, you know what I mean? Because this is literally my f–king dream.”

Everyone rushed home. Mills’ brother left school. Her mom left work. Kidney, who in the month leading up to her breakdown answered Mills’ calls as she bawled from hotel rooms, hopped in his car immediately and came to see her.

“I truly blacked out. It was the darkest day of my life and I just remember having the biggest panic attack. At the end of the day, I looked in the mirror and the blood vessels in my eyes had popped and there were rashes all over my face. Physically, I just don’t remember that day.”

On the advice of her manager and loved ones, Mills cancelled tour shows and several appearances. She took a two-week, no-social media break, then released a video called Burnt Out at 19, divulging how she was “constantly alone, always unhealthily stressed and always feeling this overwhelming pressure.”