Sorry Not Sorry

by Naya Rivera

  Even if you still manage to keep it somewhat together, you’re always going to struggle to get casting directors and audiences to see you as anything other than that kid from that thing (see Haley Joel Osment or Jonathan Lipnicki). I find the Olsen twins incredibly impressive, because they somehow managed to make the switch from cute kids to cool adults without losing their minds, but I also think it’s no surprise that they decided to focus on something other than acting. Sometimes I get annoyed when people assume I was just starting out when I was on Glee—when I’ve really been working since I was five—but on the whole I’m really thankful that I got to have several years of low-key, behind-the-scenes training.

  As frustrating as it is not to get what you want right away, success is a lot sweeter when it’s a slow build. You want to always be getting better, and to be moving on to bigger opportunities. You want to be looking forward, not looking back wistfully at how you had everything you’d ever wanted at age six. Who wants to peak as a kid, as a teenager, or even in their early twenties? Then it’s all downhill for the next six decades, and that’s just—well, yikes!

  I plan to live a long time, and I want each stage of my life to get progressively more fancy. If it’s all uphill from here, and I’ve still got some work to put in, then that’s fine by me.

  I prefer it that way.

  SORRY:

  Making fun of an alleged crack baby on the playground. Wherever you are, Melissa, I am so sorry about that.

  Male prisoners writing fan letters to a five-year-old. Oof . . . just creepy.

  Missed photo ops with super hot legendary rappers (though this sorry mostly falls on my parents).

  Drooling on Nicole Richie’s knee (sorry, girl).

  Redd Foxx’s premature death and losing such a talented comedian, a warm person, and a loving surrogate grandpa.

  NOT SORRY:

  Getting introduced to my passion—acting—while still in preschool and knowing even then that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

  Learning to memorize lines before I even learned to spell (an invaluable skill that’s stuck with me).

  All the outfits Redd got me (can’t go wrong with head-to-toe gold) and all the outfits I got to wear on Family Matters.

  That Barbie Jeep, though . . .

  That I didn’t become a famous child actor or peak at age nine.

  2

  I AM MY OWN AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL

  Learning to Love the Skin I’m In

  THINK BACK TO yourself as a preteen. Puberty hasn’t hit yet, but it’s starting to peek around the corner, so you’re all kinds of awkward. Braces. Training bras that are flat fabric on an even flatter chest. Hairy legs. Weird growth spurts that leave some parts of your body longer than they should be and others shorter. Nothing about you is proportionate. Nothing is cute.

  These awkward years smacked the shit out of me. I hated my quarter-white, quarter-black, half–Puerto Rican, and all-frizz hair. And my boobs weren’t even boobs; they were just big nipples. All the girls I knew at school were starting to wear bras, but when I asked my mom to take me shopping for one, she—oh lady of complete and total bluntness—just looked me up and down and asked, “What for?”

  By the end of elementary school, my acting career had totally dried up. At that age you’re too old to play a cute kid, too young to play a hot teenager, and basically no one wants you. Everything is made even weirder by the fact that you know so many people. I’d go in and audition for the same casting directors who’d once gushed over me as a five-year-old, and I could practically see them grimace, like, “Woof! it’s unfortunate how this one turned out . . .”

  I was still giving it a shot, though, and taking vocal lessons to try and keep myself good and ready should that big break suddenly materialize. My teacher was an old standards singer, and she taught me Billie Holiday jazz tunes and classic Broadway numbers. They were huge songs with tons of runs and show-stopping high notes, but way too big for a kid, which is why I developed vocal nodules at the age of ten. I’d been overexerting myself and basically screaming to hit these notes, and the result was that I had to go on serious vocal rest (and fire my singing teacher).

  I had a complete sobbing breakdown in the car upon hearing the news. I thought my voice was going to be gone forever. “I’m never gonna sing again!”

  “Shh, Naya, shh!” my mom said, trying both to calm me down and keep me quiet. It also didn’t help that I was a big recess screamer, yelling bloody murder for no good reason as I ran around the playground. For the next several weeks, I had to avoid talking as much as possible and would catch myself during heated games of handball—when I’d score and turn around triumphantly, ready to talk some shit, only to remember my vocal rest and realize that shit-talking isn’t nearly as impressive when you have to whisper it.

  It also didn’t help that my parents’ marriage was still rocky—just the year before, my dad had had an affair while my mom was pregnant with my sister. She kicked him out, and I remember going to visit him at his apartment, which was your stereotypical sad-dad bachelor pad: dirty beige carpet that no amount of shampooing can clean, a futon as a bed, and just enough dishware to heat up a burrito. I was like, “Dad, this is gross. You need to go home.”

  Meanwhile my mom and her pregnancy hormones weren’t faring much better. She was a devotee of the scorned-lady playlist, always crying in her room to some Anita Baker or Toni Braxton. “Mom,” I said, “talk to Dad.”

  The next time I saw my dad, I said, “Dad, talk to Mom!” Finally, they hired a babysitter to watch my brother and me, and when we came home, they were sitting together at the kitchen table. Mom turned to us and said, “Your father’s moving back in.” Woo-hoo!

  Shortly thereafter, Dad got a new job and we moved out of our cute, but tiny, house and into a big new one. I got my own room with one of those amazing window seats where the cushion lifts up so that you can hide (or just store) stuff in there, and I got to pick out a decorating scheme. Pink and white, bitches!

  But a new house didn’t solve the family problems—far from it—and I just felt anxious all the time. I missed working and the sense of routine and purpose that came with it. I also just straight-up loved acting, and although a part of me knew that the reasons I wasn’t getting roles were out of my control, a bigger part of me took it as a sign that there was something wrong with me. I felt lost and didn’t know what to do with myself. I went into junior high feeling like a loser and a has-been. I didn’t want to come home after school and watch TV; I wanted to be on TV.

  One day I just decided to see how long I could go without eating. I never thought I was fat—if anything, my lack of boobs and scrawny legs told me that I was actually too skinny—but being extra-OCD about food soon became my thing. It gave me something to think about all day, and it was a secret that I could obsess over without anyone else knowing about it.

  I just avoided food at all costs. If my mom had packed a lunch for me, I’d either trash it or find some excuse to give it away. If she’d given me money to buy my lunch, I just didn’t use it and would save it for the weekends. My eating habits—or total lack thereof—didn’t really stand out at school, since it seemed like everyone I sat with at lunch was also on her own weird food trip. My best friend, Madison, was able to convince her mom to buy her SlimFast bars, and there were other girls in my grade who cranked through a six pack of Diet Coke in a day, all while nibbling on the same bag of pretzels.

  In my own sick and twisted way, I’d look at those girls who were sort of dieting and feel superior. Because you want to know how to really lose weight? Just don’t eat anything. Ever.

  All through my years of working and auditions, no one had ever even called me chubby, so my budding anorexia had nothing to do with work—I just hated everything about myself. My mom worried that I’d catch a cold when I left for school in the morning—in California!—becau
se my hair was still wet and dripping with gel in a desperate attempt to keep it from curling itself into a mushroom cloud. I also had a mole on my chin that made me feel like a haggard old witch, and I got teased nonstop about it. “Naya’s so gross with that mole on her chin. I wonder if hair grows out of it?” people would say loudly enough for me to hear.

  I knew that I wasn’t one of the prettiest or the most popular girls in school. I wasn’t a total outcast—all the popular kids gathered in the quad at lunch or between classes, and I could hang out there too if I wanted, but I knew I wasn’t going to win the crown at any school dances. I couldn’t work my way into being the prettiest girl in school, but my level of popularity seemed like something that I could control, so soon I was splitting my time between not eating and trying to up my social status.

  Every day I’d scheme on it. I’d come home from school, do my homework, bluff my way through dinner, and then sit down to decompress and pick apart my day. I had this blue spiral-bound notebook that I’d gotten from the Ross Dress for Less discount department store. The cover had a moon on it, with “journal” printed across the front in silver script. In it, I’d write things like:

  Dear Diary,

  Today sucked. This is why:

  1. My outfit wasn’t on point. My T-shirt was too big and didn’t fit right, my shoes looked dirty, and my mom still won’t let me stuff the tongues with socks.

  2. My hair looked wet in the morning but was a frizz fest by the time I got to geography. Don’t use Bed Head After Party anymore. Go back to Pink Oil Moisturizer. It’s supposed to last all day.

  3. Cindy’s mad at me because I can’t spend the night this weekend. Hopefully she’ll still let me borrow her Chronic 2 album. Mom won’t let me buy it, and I love that song “Can’t Make a Ho a Housewife.”

  4. Why don’t I have a pager? Everyone else has a pager. I MUST get a pager.

  5. Study for math tests! Mr. Johnson announces grades when he hands papers back, and now everyone knows I got a D.

  6. Eat fewer crackers. Today I had five. Four tomorrow MAX.

  7. Talk to everyone in the quad. Even if I don’t really like them.

  8. Get more butterfly clips.

  Tomorrow will be better.

  xo,

  Naya

  I’d emerge from a good journaling session with a clear sense of purpose and a list of demands that usually seemed completely unreasonable and out of left field to my parents.

  “Dad,” I’d scream as I emerged from my bedroom, “can you take me to get a yellow shirt? I need a yellow shirt!” Nine times out of ten, they’d flat-out refuse, so I’d head back to the journal to figure out a plan B.

  The junior high I went to made us wear uniforms, so I didn’t have much to work with in the wardrobe department, but all the finesse—and signifiers of your clique—was in how you styled it. My style icon was Brittany, the coolest girl in school. Our uniforms were made up of a rather dumpy pair of khaki shorts that came down almost to our knee caps and a giant, thick white-cotton polo or T-shirt with sleeves that hung down to our elbows.

  Brittany, however, was totally unrestrained by these two horrible articles of clothing. She would take the T-shirt and roll the sleeves all the way up to her shoulders, then tie them together across the back with a piece of gift-wrapping ribbon, even curling the ends so they hung down between her shoulder blades in spirals.

  Then, she’d take her shorts and roll them up so high that you could practically see her underwear. Really, it looked like she was wearing a giant diaper and had just taken a shit in her pants. However, everyone was super into it, so I was, like, well, obviously I gotta do that.

  But my legs were so skinny that it looked like I was walking around in a pair of XXL Depends, not a super cool Brittany diaper, so, ugh! File that under just another popularity plan that backfired. I was also always shooting myself in the foot by getting can duty at lunch.

  Can duty was basically the junior high chain gang, and our school’s version of detention. If you were late to classes, got caught passing notes, or back-talked to a teacher, you were assigned to spend your entire lunch period going around the school grounds and picking up cans. What was worse, to ensure that you really did it, you had to collect at least fifty cans each time. And trust me—even if my hair looked good that day, and I’d rolled up my sleeves and tied them with the absolute coolest glittery pink ribbon in all of Valencia—no one was going to want to talk to me while I was digging through the trash in search of Dr Pepper cans.

  I convinced my dad to help me out by raiding the recycling at his office, so for the entirety of my eighth-grade year, he was driving around with a bunch of garbage in the backseat of his car so I could turn in my requisite cans and still have time to glad-hand my way through lunch hour. Ah, the sacrifices that parents make for their children!

  Finally, eighth-grade graduation rolled around, and as a celebration, my mom let me do two things that had previously been banned in the Rivera household: shave my legs and straighten my hair.

  Shaved legs, straight hair, ready to take on the world. Maybe.

  Or, to be more precise, my mom did both. For me. The day of our graduation ceremony, convinced that I’d nick the hell out of my knees and bleed to death, she had me sit on the side of the bathtub and lathered up my legs—only from the knee down, of course—and did the shaving for me, with a little pink-plastic disposable razor. I also got a new outfit, a little orange two-piece with matching sequined top and bottom, and walked across that stage feeling like I was on top of the world. I had straight hair and smooth legs. What the hell could go wrong?

  HIGH SCHOOL HELL

  At first it seemed that high school was going to live up to my mile-high expectations. My best friend, Madison, had a boyfriend, and all around me everybody was getting boyfriends. Inevitably, “Get a boyfriend” was soon added to my nightly to-do lists, and it became my mission. As I’d walk down the halls in between classes, I’d scan the boys’ passing faces. Who was going to be my boyfriend?

  Soon, I had a target. Stewart would be my boyfriend. Stewart and I had barely talked, and I knew practically nothing about him, except that he was half-white, half-black—mixed race just like me. So, duh, obviously this was going to work. Stewart and I could do this. We started to exchange a few more words here and there—he’d come up to my locker during passing period and ask for a piece of gum, and I would give it to him. Then one day Madison and I walked past him and his friend Alex as we were leaving the quad.

  “Hey, Naya,” Alex yelled. “He wants you to be his girlfriend.” Stewart just stood there.

  “Okay,” I yelled back, and it was Alex who flashed us a thumbs-up. Still, though—success! I had a boyfriend!

  The next day, I walked up to Stewart and got his phone number, figuring that if we were going to be in a relationship, then we’d better start talking on the phone. Because that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends did in ninth grade—talked on the phone. A lot.

  Except Stewart didn’t have much to say. Forget that—Stewart didn’t have anything to say. I had wanted it to last, but, alas, Stewart just didn’t seem to be the one, so the next day I told Alex to tell him that I was dumping him. Alex seemed totally up to the task, and asked no questions. Madison couldn’t believe that I’d broken up with Stewart, but I felt confident in my decision, since I now knew that having a boyfriend wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. I was also certain that I knew what key qualities my future true love would have:

  HE HAS TO BE . . .

  successful in some career or working toward it

  financially well off, and able to spoil me rotten

  driving a nice car—no POSs!

  handsome, possibly male model material, preferably with long hair

  sexy

  funny! has to be able to laugh with me (not @ me)

  creative—i.e., music
, art, etc.

  sensitive but not gay

  romantic but not corny

  a good kisser

  good in bed

  good @ kissing my ass

  able to cook (because I can’t)

  able to clean (+ not bitch @ me for it)

  able to travel (with me)

  spontaneous!

  responsible

  at the same spiritual level as me (wherever I am @ that time)

  nice to the family

  able to go out to dinner a lot

  able to afford several trips to Rodeo Drive

  nice

  patient (especially w/ me)

  all or mostly all of these things

  Even though I’d changed schools and my love life was looking up, I still wasn’t eating. I’d always been thin, but now I was in skin-and-bones territory. In junior high, when we’d lived in an apartment complex, I’d sneak down to the gym and spend hours on the elliptical machines to burn off the few calories that I’d consumed that day. Now that we were in our own house, I’d do yoga videos in my room or even just secretly jog in place when I thought no one was looking. I’m surprised I didn’t wear a hole in my carpet. In PE, while other girls tried to avoid sweating as much as possible, I took every timed mile and game of softball very seriously, not wanting to miss any opportunity for more exercise.

  I’d come home from school starving and cranky, and hope that my mom didn’t notice. I needn’t have worried, because for the most part she didn’t. She had my brother and sister to deal with, both of whom were still in elementary school, the family was starting to have money problems again, and though she and my dad were back together, they were fighting more than ever, to the point where sometimes I’d have no choice but to round up Mychal and Nickayla and usher them out the door, talking about how fun it would be for the three of us to go to the park for a while.