Sorry Not Sorry

by Naya Rivera

  But by the time I was a sophomore, I started to get the feeling that what had begun as a game had maybe gone too far. One day I was so hungry that I was shaking, and I decided to eat an apple. Instead of eating it, though, I just sat there and held it up to my mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. It was like the two sides of my brain were competing, one of them telling me to “eat it, it’s just an apple,” and the other telling me “no, no, no—that’ll ruin everything.”

  My parents were starting to clue in, and I also felt like I was losing control. It turns out that routinely denying your body nutrients and being hungry 24-7 is a great way to bring on a mental freak-out!

  I finally worked up the nerve to tell my dad that I thought I was anorexic, which was a slap in the face to my parents. I don’t think that either of them had even known anyone with an eating disorder before, and while they knew it was a big deal, they still had no idea what to do about it. At one point my mom even said, “Naya, this is some white-people shit.”

  When we would all sit down to dinner as a family, I’d go to great pains to hide the food, so that it would still disappear from my plate, even though I hadn’t eaten a thing. Our dining table was this big wooden hunk with drawers on the side, which was super convenient for me. When no one was looking, I’d scoop the food into the drawer and quickly shut it again. Usually, I’d come back to get it later and throw it away, but not always. So gross, right? I was like Brittany Murphy’s character in Girl, Interrupted with the chickens.

  One day my mom opened the drawer and found a bunch of rotting mashed potatoes and old chicken breast that I’d stashed in there who knows when and forgotten about. For the obvious reasons, she flipped, and came screaming into my room. She started wailing on me. I was running from her, as she yelled, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you doing this? This is sick—this is sick! You need help!” I knew I needed help, and she should probably be the one to help me.

  This only added fuel to the fire of our disintegrating relationship. The war between moms and their teenage daughters is an epic one fought in households around the world, and in the case between me and my mom, we both had enough of our own shit going on that we had a hard time putting ourselves in each other’s shoes. My mom has never been a great communicator, and she’s also a tough-ass lady. It’s one of the qualities I admire most in her. But she does struggle with empathy. She’s the last person on earth who’s going to feel sorry for you, and at this point in my life that was all I wanted. It didn’t, and wasn’t, going to happen though, and so on the pages of my journal that weren’t filled with calorie-counting lists of everything I’d eaten that day and social-climbing plans, I’d scrawl “I hate my mom” over and over.

  July 3, 2001

  I HATE MY MOM. She’s a bitch. I wish she would love me back the way I love her. If she read this, she would probably beat me up. I HATE HER.

  July 22, 2001

  Journal,

  I don’t hate my mom. I just don’t like her a lot of the time.

  At the worst of it, I was five foot four inches tall and weighed ninety-eight pounds. I passed out from dehydration when we had to run a mile in PE—during which I really pushed myself. I had to be taken to the hospital to get an IV. Since it’d already been established that my mom was not well equipped to deal with this, most of it fell on my dad. He picked me up from school and took me to the hospital, and we sat there, mostly in silence, as I got a needle in my arm. “Naya, you’ve got to eat,” he’d say. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You’re killing yourself.” I’d nod, with tears streaming down my face, but then I’d be right back up on my feet after the IV, and the next day I’d throw my lunch in the trash once again.

  After an additional hospital visit, my dad seemed to realize that something drastic needed to be done, and that he was going to have to be the one to do it. Someone told him he should take me to see a psychiatrist, so he did, but the visits were as useless as I would have expected them to be.

  November 6, 2001

  I can’t take this. I’m starving! I just had a freakin’ breakdown because I couldn’t even eat an apple. I don’t wanna tell anyone because they’ll just think it’s old and be annoyed. I don’t have a problem—I just suppress my hunger. I can’t stop thinking about it—it’s driving me crazy! All I think about is what I’ve eaten today and what I’m gonna eat tomorrow.

  Dad would come and pick me up after school, and then drive me to the psychiatrist’s totally depressing and incredibly sterile-looking office. I’d sit on the couch and get asked a bunch of predictable questions. He’d ask me over and over again why I’d felt the need to do this, a question that I could readily answer: not eating made me feel in control. I’d already self-diagnosed. I knew why I did this.

  If the guy had been worth his co-pay, he probably would have realized that it was my control issues that needed to be addressed here, and that by working on them the eating disorder would probably resolve itself. Instead, he decided that I must be depressed and prescribed Lexapro, an antidepressant. My parents aren’t pill-popping people, so I think under normal circumstances they would have balked at putting their teenage daughter on psychotropics, but at this point, they were at their wits’ end and willing to try anything that an “expert” told them would work. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” my mom would say. “I wish I knew how to help you.”

  I was prescribed a very small dosage, but, still, taking the pills made me feel weird, like I was two steps removed from everything around me. I hated feeling out of it, so I secretly started to throw the pills away while pretending to take them. I knew that something was wrong with me, but I also knew I wasn’t depressed.

  Finally, I told my parents that I wanted to stop taking the pills—which really meant that I was ready to stop having to pretend that I was taking the pills. There was an unspoken understanding among the three of us that since I had gotten myself into this, I would somehow know how to get myself out.

  And I did. Toward the end of my sophomore year of high school, I became friends with a group of black girls at school who—unlike the white girls I knew who considered a Slim- Fast bar to be a meal—had no desire to be skin and bones. They preached to me about how guys liked thick girls, with asses and curves. Since at this point in my life, my only guy experience was my twelve-hour relationship with Stewart, I decided that I should probably try to get another boyfriend. These girls were friends with a bunch of jocks, and since there were a couple of guys on the football team I wouldn’t mind making out with, that, amazingly enough, was all it took to get me to start eating again. Soon, instead of agonizing over an apple, I was going through the McDonald’s drive-thru twice a day. I gained fifteen pounds and never looked back.

  THE BIG ONE-EIGHT AND MAKING BIG DECISIONS

  My child-acting money had gone into something called a Coogan account, which is kind of like an official trust set up to make sure that your parents don’t steal all your money (more on this later). You get access to it when you turn eighteen, and a good portion of my high school years was spent dreaming about what I’d do as soon as I got access to my account—I knew exactly what I was going to do with part of it at least. I’d always been made fun of for being flat-chested, but as long as I was really skinny, barely there boobs were part of the package. As soon as I got “thick,” though, I wanted t-i-t-s.

  My dad’s colleague was married to this diminutive Dominican trophy wife, Erica, who was super cute, fun to be around, and the proud owner of some amazing-looking fake tits. Erica was extra nice to me and took my awkward teenage self under her wing. The first time I ever ate pot brownies was at her house, because she seemed to always be cooking up a batch and let me try one.

  She shopped almost exclusively at Barneys and designer boutiques, and the first time I ever went shopping on Rodeo Drive, she was the one who took me. I felt very Pretty Woman, except without the prostitution. Her u
niform was always sassy little body-con dresses, even though she’d had two kids, and that made her even more of a superwoman in my eyes. I’d babysit her kids whenever she needed me to, and she paid me really well and even let me raid her closet.

  She had tons of velour Juicy Couture sweatsuits, which were the absolute apex of LA fashion in 2004, so I’d borrow those and even spritz myself with her perfume, total stalker style. She had already had breast implants, but when she got them done for the second time, I helped out and watched the kids while she was recovering from the surgery. When she came back, she showed me her new toys.

  “Wow,” I said. “Those are fantastic. When I turn eighteen, I am totally getting my boobs done.” Without missing a beat, she handed me a business card and said, “See him!” So I did. When I became a legal adult, I came complete with a plastic surgeon. As soon as I got access to my Coogan account, I made an appointment for a consultation. I had already told my parents about my plans, but they were—no surprise—staunchly opposed to the idea. I asked my mom to come with me, and in protest she said no. “I do not condone this,” she said icily, sitting at the kitchen table with her back to me. I was completely undeterred and just drove myself to the appointment.

  At the doctor’s, I told them when my birthday was and when I wanted to schedule the appointment, and then I wrote a check for the eight-thousand-dollar procedure so it was paid for before I even walked out the door.

  When it came time to have the surgery, I took a week off school. I went around to all my teachers, told them I was going to be out, and gathered up all the assignments that I was going to miss. “Where are you going?” many of them asked, assuming that I was headed on a family vacation to Hawaii or something of the sort.

  “I’m getting plastic surgery!” I’d tell them gleefully, then head right back out the door. My art teacher was stoked, though—when I told her, she said that she too had fake tits and that she was very excited for me. “I can’t wait to see what they look like when you come back!” she said, which under many other circumstances could be interpreted as totally creepy.

  The day of the procedure, my dad decided to drive me. I was living with him at the time, and as much as I don’t think he liked the idea, he also knew that letting his teenage daughter drive herself to and from surgery was a guaranteed way to win him the worst-parent award. I was dressed for the occasion, wearing a hot-pink Juicy Couture sweatsuit, UGG boots, and a Tiffany heart-locket necklace. I’m pretty sure this is the official “getting fake tits” outfit as designated by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

  I was not scared one bit about going under or about how painful the recovery process might be. And after the surgery, I didn’t hurt much at all, and I didn’t even need to take the painkillers they’d given me. Back home at my dad’s, I was up and walking around, until he convinced me that I should probably take a pain pill and go to bed, because staying up all night after surgery, as though nothing had happened, was probably not a good idea.

  Madison was the first person to visit; she came over to see them and brought me Jamba Juice. My mom eventually came around to my new boobs as well—she had to admit that they looked great, and she started to help me shower and change my bandages, both of which were hard to do on my own.

  For a while, I had restrictions on what I could do: I couldn’t lift anything heavy or raise my arms above my head, and I had to make sure to massage the implants against a wall so they wouldn’t get hard. This looked as awkward and as weird as you might imagine, kind of like a cat rubbing up against a pole.

  My new boobs were a confidence thing, not a sexual thing. I’d never even taken my top off for a guy. I hadn’t had many opportunities to do so, but even if I had, it probably wouldn’t have happened, because my bra was always stuffed with napkins or, if I’d managed to sneak them, my mom’s chicken cutlets. Even after I got my implants, it was still a long time before anyone but Madison and my mom saw them. Not that the boys didn’t try—as soon as I went back to school, they were all extra nice and practically fell over themselves rushing to see who could hold the door open for me.

  When I went to see my art teacher, she was super impressed. “Do you mind if I ask,” she said, “who did those?” So I pulled a business card out of my backpack, handed it to her, and said, “See him.”

  CALLING A TRUCE WITH MY BODY IMAGE

  Thankfully, more than a decade after all this stuff happened, I’m happy to say that I no longer treat my body like it’s my enemy. Now I love to cook for myself and my family, and since I know how bad fast food is for you (even when it tastes good), you won’t find me cruising around town with a Big Mac in my hand. If I went to McDonald’s twice in one day now, I’d probably puke.

  I have a healthy relationship with food now. I can still lose weight easily, like if I need to quickly drop a pound or two for a photo shoot, or shed my postbaby bulges, but I do it the right way. I might as well make bumper stickers that say “Starvation is not the answer.”

  I still consider myself something of a control freak, though. It is just how I am—I will never be a go-with-the-flow kind of girl, bouncing around like a pinball. I like to know where I’m going, and that I’m in the driver’s seat. I want to have my fall wardrobe sorted out by the beginning of the summer. I know how I want my house to look, and when I have a schedule, I like to stick to it. I think this is also part of why I have such a strong work ethic. I always know my lines, I’m always on my mark, and I’m always on time. I take pride in being professional, and I like to set a goal and work toward it.

  As a teenager, though, you have very few outlets where you can decide what you want for yourself. You probably don’t have a job, you can’t drive yourself, and you’re at this weird transition point when the only way you can have any independence is if someone else decides to give it to you. Controlling what I ate was my one way out, the one place where I felt like I got to make the decisions in my life. In my journal, I’d note what I’d eaten that day and what I planned to eat tomorrow. Keeping track and organizing what I ate, and the effort it took to hide what I was doing, felt like a full-time job, which was actually exactly what I wanted. I wasn’t acting at all anymore, and I needed to have something that felt like work.

  I don’t want to trash the idea of going to therapy or taking medication, because that is what works for some people, and both can be very valuable tools. It just wasn’t what worked for me at that point in my life. Now I go to therapy semi-annually, because I think it’s a much-needed time-out. It helps me to be more introspective, to be more grateful, and to get to know myself in ways that can hopefully make me a better person.

  My mom is also now my best friend—I’ve even read her my horrible journal entries, which now come off as laughable odes to teenage angst and melodrama. I still wish she had been more understanding of what I was going through, and I think she does too, but we both understand why she wasn’t. I think you’re finally an adult when you can look at your parents as people going through their own shit, rather than just seeing them as unfeeling tyrants here to make your life miserable.

  It also seems like body issues are the norm for a lot of women, and I’m sure more than a few people will read these pages and think “that’s me!” Being happy with how we look is just something that a lot of us struggle with, and we can name what we hate much more easily than we can name what we love. Some of our parts are too skinny, some are too fat, and some we just hate for no reason. We’re always super critical of ourselves, and that also leads us to be more critical of other people as well. You see it in all the tabloids that seem to be chomping at the bit to get a pic of someone bending over in a bikini on the beach, just so they can draw a big red circle around the cellulite. So what? We’re supposed to make ourselves feel better by making other people feel worse? It doesn’t work that way.

  Accepting your body is a lot easier said than done, which is why I think you gotta do what you gotta do to ma
ke yourself feel good. People have a lot of opinions about plastic surgery, but more than ten years after I got my boobs, they still make me happy when I look in the mirror. It might have even been the best $8K I’ve ever spent . . .

  SORRY:

  Wallowing in self-hatred. It’s not cute.

  Starving myself crazy. This did a number on my physical and mental health, and I owe my body a big apology.

  Stashing my dinner in a drawer rather than eating it. (Mom, I am truly sorry you had to discover this decomposing compost heap.)

  Shitty communication. Being better at talking things through would have saved both me and my parents a lot of trouble and tears.

  Thinking I “hated” my mom. Moms and teenage daughters will never get along—we just have to realize it’s nothing personal on either side.

  School uniforms. Seriously, they’re the worst.

  Can duty and falling victim to the school’s indenturedservitude recycling program.

  NOT SORRY:

  Keeping a journal and making lists. I learned early on that writing down your goals is the first step toward achieving them.

  Boob job. I thank my Coogan for this cleavage.

  Knowing myself well enough to know that I didn’t need antidepressants.

  Learning to love my body and take care of it, even if I don’t think it’s perfect.

  Figuring out ways to get around can duty (thanks, Dad!).

  3

  NO MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS

  Learning to Live With It and Without It

  WHEN I LOOK back at my journal entries, there are several themes that stand out: food (oof), boys (duh), and money. Money was especially important to me as I was growing up, because sometimes we had it—but most of the time because we didn’t.