Select Quotes
Before
Chapter 3
On the other hand, I do want what Mom wants, so she’s kind of right.
Chapter 5
We have a rat and possum problem, so the only thing you’ll see on your sliver of path is dead rats and possums stuck in the traps Dad places every few weeks. The dead rats and possums stink.
Chapter 9
“You have to always be ‘on’ in class,” Mom reminds me on every
Forcing emotions into a thing is uncomfortable in the first place, but then putting on those emotions for other people to see feels gross to me. It feels weak and vulnerable and naked.
Chapter 10
I know Mom partially sympathizes with me or she wouldn’t be overexplaining herself the way that she is.
Chapter 12
she doesn’t watch me dance the way she watches me act. Maybe it’s because she didn’t want to be a dancer growing up, she wanted to be an actress, and maybe Mom only sits in when I’m being the thing she wanted to be.
Dad doesn’t do stuff like that. He doesn’t even seem aware of stuff like that. He just kinda… exists.
Chapter 13
“You’ve just gotta be a little patient.” Mom hangs up, exasperated. “Heavenly Father, please grant me patience. And be quick.”
Chapter 14
Even though Mormons aren’t accountable for our sins until we’re eight years old, so I knew I hadn’t had a ton of time to really screw things up, I wondered if somehow I had. Why haven’t I heard the Holy Ghost? I’d ask in my prayers.
Chapter 17
I keep my eyes shut and think about what Mom said. That I’m perfect. I know this is important for her to believe, even though I’m not sure why. I’m not allowed to have any problems.
Chapter 21
Crying on cue is the skill you want in child acting. Everything else pales in comparison.
Granted, crying on cue was not fun for me. It was one of the more miserable experiences of my life, sitting in a cold casting office imagining tragic events that harm my beloved family.
Chapter 24
I absolutely prefer writing to acting. Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.
Chapter 27
Whether or not Scott’s there with me, Mom gives me a breast and “front butt” exam, which is what she calls my private parts.
Chapter 31
It confuses me when people throw a spin on the delivery of something to overcompensate for the fact that the thing they’re delivering is unpleasant.
Chapter 32
Maybe that’s the secret ingredient. The missing piece. Maybe if I were kissing somebody I loved, it would be magical and incredible and not this terrifying rush of anxiety.
Chapter 34
The kind of fame I have now is causing me a level of stress that I did not know was possible. I know everybody wants it, and everybody tells me how lucky I am to have it, but I hate it. I feel constantly on edge whenever I leave the house to go anywhere.
I’m so unimpressed by people. Even irritated by them. At times even disgusted by them. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but I know it’s a relatively recent switch and I know fame had something to do with it. I’m tired of people approaching me like they own me. Like I owe them something. I didn’t choose this life.
The second the child star tries to outgrow and break free from their image, they become bait for the media, highly publicized as rebellious, troubled, and tortured, when all they’re trying to do is grow. Growing is wobbly and full of mistakes, especially as a teenager—mistakes that you certainly don’t want to make in the public eye, let alone be known for for the rest of your life. But that’s what happens when you’re a child star. Child stardom is a trap. A dead end.
I realize that she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine. I feel robbed and exploited. Sometimes I look at her and I just hate her. And then I hate myself for feeling that. I tell myself I’m ungrateful. I’m worthless without her. She’s everything to me.
Chapter 35
Maybe people go to church because they want things from God. And they keep going while they’re wishing and yearning and longing for those things. But then maybe once they get those things, they realize they don’t need church anymore. Who needs God when you’ve got clear mammograms and a series regular role on Nickelodeon?
Chapter 36
I can tell by the way the PAs and ADs are treating me that they’ve all heard the news. I’m humiliated. And ashamed. How did I let this happen? How did I become a woman? I don’t know the answer, but I know the solution. I know what I’ll do to fix this. Tomorrow there won’t be any 2% milk or Honeycomb or Smart Ones. I’ve been slacking and the slacking needs to stop. I need to get back to anorexia. I need to be a kid again.
Chapter 37
Mom had me start posting covers on YouTube. Record labels saw those covers and two, Big Machine Records and Capitol Records Nashville, wanted to sign me. Mom decided on Capitol Records, because “Scott Borschetta’s gonna be too busy with that Taylor chick; he won’t have time for you.”
Chapter 40
“We’ve gotta get you on a diet. This is getting out of hand.” “I know.” I’m full of remorse, for sure. But there’s also a piece of me that picks up a little bit of enthusiasm, a little bit of a lift in spirit, because this is the mom I know. She’s not weak, or frail, or soft, or beaten down by cancer like whoever the person was that I saw as soon as I got to baggage claim. Whoever that wilted excuse of a person was, I refuse to believe that person is my mother. The mom I know is the person sitting in front of me, the person who is strong-willed and forceful and sometimes vicious. This is the mom I know.
Chapter 41
’Cuz I could give a new show to anyone, you know. But I didn’t choose anyone. I chose you.” “Thank you.” “Don’t thank me, I chose you because you’re talented.” I’m confused. He just said he could choose anyone, which made me feel not special and now he’s saying he chose me because I’m talented, which makes me feel special again.
Chapter 45
I’m desperate to feel close with her, but also desperate for that closeness to be on my terms, not hers. I want her to know me for who I’m becoming. I want her to allow my growth. I want her to want me to be me.
Chapter 46
Mom urges as she removes her Ugg hat to scratch her bald head. On the surface, it seems like such a sad gesture, but I could swear she’s doing this manipulatively.
Chapter 49
I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with. Because once the context ends, so does the friendship.
Chapter 50
The timing of food at restaurants is always impeccably in line with the phrase you’d least like someone to overhear. You almost have to appreciate it, it’s like the waiters work on this.
“Look, I just am.”
Chapter 54
I’m becoming an angry person with no tolerance for anyone. I’m aware of this shift and yet have no desire to change it. If anything, I want it. It’s armor. It’s easier to be angry than to feel the pain underneath it.
Chapter 55
I don’t love him. Maybe it’s because I don’t have space in my heart to love anyone right now while Mom’s dying, or maybe that’s me trying to blame a genuine lack of connection on grief. Grief is a great scapegoat.
I’m discovering just how powerful of a tool it is to not love someone. Loving someone is vulnerable. It’s sensitive. It’s tender. And I get lost in them. If I love someone, I start to disappear. It’s so much easier to just do googly eyes and fond memories and inside jokes for a few months, run the second things start to get real, then repeat the cycle with someone new.
I feel like the world is divided into two types of people: people who know loss and people who don’t. And whenever I encounter someone who doesn’t, I disregard them.
Mom takes a sharp breath in, then out. The hospice nurse locks eyes with Dad, gives a slight nod. Dad looks at us. Mom’s gone. We’re all numb. We don’t cry. We just sit. In silence. Finally, I pick up my phone. A hundred messages have poured in. Everyone’s heard. E! News broke the story. How the fuck they already know, I have no idea. I go to my text tab, then click on the chain with Current Guy. I stare at his last text: Don’t say that, boo. Your mom’s not gonna die. I text him back: She just did.
After
Chapter 56
I don’t eat a single bite of it. I feel lucky, grateful even, that trauma has finally resulted in my lack of hunger.
Chapter 59
I haven’t had sex yet, but it’s starting to feel like an appropriate time. I’m not scared of it anymore. I’m not scared of anything anymore, because I don’t really care about anything anymore since Mom died.
Liam seems like a solid person to lose my virginity to. I like him just fine but I don’t care about him in a deep way, so I don’t have to fear growing attached to him the second after we have sex—which is a genuine fear of mine since I’ve heard about this feminine weakness a hundred times.
I hate when females are so obvious with their crushes. If you’re obvious, some other little bitch can come along and exploit that crush, use it against you, betray you with it. I learned this from Mom’s long-winded speeches about trusting women even less than men. “Men, they’ll hurt you without ever really knowing you,” she often told me. “But women… women will know you deeply, intimately, and then hurt you. You tell me which is worse.” And so I don’t trust women. I just observe them. I watch them act desperate and weak and pathetic. It’s so embarrassing to be a woman. I study women like Emmy so that I can be different from them. Better than them.
Chapter 60
There were the anorexic years, the binge-eating ones, and the current bulimic ones. The more experience I’ve got, the more I recognize that the body is hardly a reliable reflection of what’s going on inside it.
People seem to assign thin with “good,” heavy with “bad,” and too thin also with “bad.” There’s such a small window of “good.” It’s a window that I currently fall into, even though my habits are so far from good. I’m abusing my body every day.
Chapter 61
“Yeah, not now,” Patti says rudely to the producer on the other side of the door. I love her. I appreciate her. She has the balls to stand up to these people.
Chapter 63
I can’t get a hold on my bulimia. It’s taken me over and I’ve stopped fighting. What’s the point? It’s stronger than I’ll ever be. It’s easier not to fight it. It’s easier to accept it, embrace it even.
Chapter 64
Through the years, I’ve slowly learned that the entertainment business is one where what’s being said is rarely what’s being talked about. This way of operating not only disagrees with me but seems genuinely impossible for me to adapt to. Everyone else seems so able to position things discreetly and choreograph their phrasing so that the heartbeat of what’s being said is delicately danced around, but what winds up happening is that I usually just don’t understand what’s being talked about and have to ask outright. There are occasional times, however, where I do get exactly what’s happening, like this time right now. And in these instances, instead of asking outright what’s going on, I’ll just say it. The results vary. Sometimes it’s laughter. Sometimes it’s discomfort. This time it’s discomfort.
Chapter 65
It doesn’t help that I’m famous for a thing I started when I was a kid. I think of what it would be like if everyone was famous for a thing they did when they were thirteen: their middle school band, their seventh-grade science project, their eighth-grade play. The middle school years are the years to stumble, fall, and tuck under the rug as soon as you’re done with them because you’ve already outgrown them by the time you’re fifteen. But not for me. I’m cemented in people’s minds as the person I was when I was a kid. A person I feel like I’ve far outgrown. But the world won’t let me outgrow it. The world won’t let me be anyone else.
Chapter 66
I’m obsessed with these ten pounds. Tortured by them. I don’t understand. Why won’t my body do what I want it to do? Why won’t bulimia help me out anymore? I thought we were friends. I thought bulimia had my back. Clearly it doesn’t. Clearly I had this whole relationship wrong. Yet I can’t seem to get out of it. I feel stuck to, enslaved
This is why I didn’t want a cake and candles in the first place. I didn’t want to have to deal with my birthday wish. At twenty-two, this is the first birthday wish I’ll be making where I won’t know what to wish for because the thing I’ve been wishing for all my life is done. Over. Case closed. The thing that I secretly hoped through all these years I had some control over, I now know that I don’t, and never did. My entire life’s purpose, keeping Mom alive and happy, was for nothing. All those years I spent focusing on her, all the time I spent orienting my every thought and action toward what I thought would please her most, were pointless. Because now she’s gone. I tried desperately to understand and know my mother—what made her sad, what made her happy, and on and on and on—at the expense of ever really knowing myself. Without Mom around, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. I don’t know who I am. And I certainly don’t know what to wish for. I lean forward and blow out the candles, wishless.
Chapter 67
I’m aware there are worse things than starring on television shows you’re not proud of yet the awareness doesn’t change a thing. This is the truth for me. I am ashamed. I want to do good work. I want to do work I’m proud of. This matters to me on a deep, inherent level. I want to make a difference, or at least feel like I’m making a difference through my work. Without that feeling, that connection, the work feels pointless and vapid. I feel pointless and vapid.
Chapter 68
There’s a sweetness to Steven that’s so far from typical nice-guy sweetness, which is—let’s face it—dull. His sweetness is somehow cool. Maybe it’s his voice that makes it that way. Oh my God, his voice. It’s my favorite thing about him—quiet and gravelly, probably from his two packs a day, but that’s fine, we can deal with the lung cancer later.
Chapter 69
I’ve pretended to be other people my whole life, my whole childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. The years that you’re supposed to spend finding yourself, I was spending pretending to be other people. The years that you’re supposed to spend building character, I was spending building characters.
Chapter 70
explore balanced and non-obsessive physical activity options together.” (My eating disorder translates into exercise as well. I run a half-marathon twice a week and five to ten miles every other day.)
Chapter 72
The task of FEELING this confusing, overwhelming blob of emotions instead of distracting myself with bulimia is daunting. Bulimia helps me to rid myself of these emotions even if it is a temporary, unsustainable fix.
Chapter 75
I couldn’t believe he had chosen me to go to the party with him. Me! I didn’t have to believe it for long because I quickly discovered it was Mom who wanted me to go with him, to collect intel on which co-workers he might potentially be having an affair with. “Don’t rule out Don. I’ve always wondered if your father’s secretly gay. Something about the way he sits, the way he crosses his legs.”
Why, whenever two people are hugging in a room of three, does the third person feel the need to get in on the hug? Hugs were meant as a two-person activity, not a three-person one. We don’t need you, Number 3. Thank you.
Chapter 77
I spot a small, white, hard chunk. I run my tongue along my teeth and realize one of them is missing. The acidity from my stomach fluids has worn down my enamel to the point that I just lost a lower-left molar.
Chapter 81
“SLIPS ARE TOTALLY NORMAL. WHEN you have a slip, it’s just that. A slip. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you a failure. The most important thing is that you don’t let that slip become a slide,”
if we beat ourselves up after a mistake, we add shame onto the guilt and frustration that we already feel about our mistake. That guilt and frustration can be helpful in moving us forward, but shame… shame keeps us stuck. It’s a paralyzing emotion. When we get caught in a shame spiral, we tend to make more of the same kinds of mistakes that caused us shame in the first place.”
Chapter 83
“What am I gonna tell Linda? And Joanie? And Louise?!” Grandma yells with her arms flailing in confusion. “I think you can just tell them the truth,” I offer.
it’s constantly falling apart. There’s always something to fix—a contractor comes by almost every day. I didn’t realize homeownership was gonna be another job, a job I’m not interested in and don’t have the time for.”
Chapter 84
“Oh, that’s good. We need more young people like you. Cultured. Which jazz bands do you like?” “Just all of ’em. The whole… all of ’em.” Colton nods.
I ask him if he knew Mom died. He says yes, he saw it on E! News. I think about what a strange sentence that is.
Chapter 87
As an actor, you can’t control which agents want to represent you, what roles your agent submits you for, which auditions you get, what callbacks you get, what roles you get, what the lines are for your role, how you look for your role, how the director directs your performance, how the editor edits your performance, whether the show gets picked up or the movie does well, whether critics like your performance, whether you get famous, how the media portrays you, and so on. God bless the souls who can tolerate that much up-in-the-airness in their lives, but I can’t anymore.
Chapter 91
Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them? Especially moms. They’re the most romanticized of anyone. Moms are saints. Angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it’s like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.
then I realize I’m just romanticizing the dead in the same way I wish everyone else wouldn’t. Mom made it very clear she had no interest in changing.