by Naya Rivera
A few hours later, Angie called and woke me up for the second time that day, and demanded that I come meet her at Universal CityWalk for dinner. I agreed—because it was her birthday and I felt bad that no one came to her party—but when I met her, she was in a fouler mood than I could have anticipated. In the brief period of time since I’d seen her, she’d gone and gotten her septum pierced, and then proceeded to accuse me of making her do drugs and ruining her life. I took one look at her new face jewelry, a full bull ring in her nose, and knew right then and there that this friendship had run its course.
I have no idea where Angie is now. After that day, I stopped answering her texts and phone calls, and it wasn’t long after then that I quit Hooters and started to get my own shit together. When I think back on it, I feel sorry for her—her life clearly sucked. She’d moved to Los Angeles with her crazy family and was convinced that she was going to make it big in Hollywood, but the closest she got to that dream was a self-made entry into Oprah’s search for the next great talk show host. I obviously didn’t feel that great about myself either, so we were a pretty unstable combination. You can’t be a good friend to someone else unless you’re a good friend to yourself first, so neither one of us contributed anything more than drama to that relationship.
Never feel bad about cutting someone out of your life—sometimes that’s the only option. When you hang out with people who are true friends, you come away feeling lighter, more inspired to work hard, give love, and take care of yourself. When I hung out with Angie, I always felt totally drained afterward, like I needed a green juice and some Deepak Chopra to get my body and mind right. I wasn’t myself with her and I’m glad I finally recognized that.
When you’re deciding whom to be friends with and whom to let into your life, you have to look for quality people who bring out the best in you, the kind of people you can stay in and watch The Notebook with, the people who will still hug you even when you have snot running down your face because you’ve just spent the last two hours crying about some asshole who cheated on you. And then you have to do the same for them. A friendship is just as much give-and-take and compromise as a romantic relationship, so you will get out what you put in.
Don’t take your friendship cues from The Real Housewives and build relationships off superficial things you have in common, like money or the same plastic surgeon. It’s also too easy to get caught up in wanting to be friends with the coolest girls, the ones who seem to know all the guys and can get into all the clubs, or the ones who will look hot in your Instagram photos (#brunchwithmybitches). But beware. If you choose your friends based only on what you think they can do for you, someday you’re gonna find yourself brunching alone.
FROM ONE BITCH TO ANOTHER . . .
When it was announced that I was writing a book, everyone expected me to use it to rip Lea a new one, so let me list just a few of the reasons why I’m not going to do that: one, I have better things to write about; two, it doesn’t bring you up to bring someone else down; and three, I don’t hate Lea, and I never have.
One of the Glee writers once said that Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery, and that about sums us up. We are both strong-willed and competitive—not just with each other but with everyone—and that’s not a good mixture. When two people with strong personalities are friends, or in any kind of relationship, they’re eventually going to clash. And maybe they’ll get over it; maybe they won’t. Lea and I didn’t.
In the beginning, Lea and I were friends on set and off. We always had a good time together, and it seemed like we were building a friendship. We’d go to the spa together, or she’d go pick up takeout from Real Food Daily and then we’d just sit around at her house. We were the kind of friends who didn’t have to make specific plans; we could just hang out. I remember once going over to her house and sitting on the bed while she cleaned out her closet, giving my opinion on whether I thought she should keep or toss articles of clothing (or, you know, give them to me).
Once, shortly after Lea and Cory started dating, I told her she needed to slut it up a bit. And instead of slapping me, like one might have expected her to do in this situation, she agreed. I went and picked her up at her house, and we went shopping at Kiki de Montparnasse—it was a very Santana and Rachel outing. I helped her pick out all this sexy lingerie, and told her that her body looked great, and then we went and ate sandwiches and drank beers afterward.
Cory called in the middle of it, and when she answered, she laughed, “I just went lingerie shopping and now I’m eating a sub. I must be hanging out with Naya.”
As the show progressed, though, that friendship started to break down, especially as Santana moved from a background character to one with bigger plot lines and more screen time. I think Rachel—erm, I mean Lea—didn’t like sharing the spotlight. On top of that, she had a hard time separating work from our outside friendship, whereas it was a lot easier for me. I’m not offended when people offer feedback or criticism, and if things get heated on set, I try to keep perspective. We’re all stressed, yes, but we’re all working toward the same goal, so laugh it off and keep it movin’.
Lea was a lot more sensitive, though, and sometimes it seemed like she blamed me for anything and everything that went wrong. If I’d complained about anyone or anything, she’d assumed I was bitching about her. Soon she started to ignore me, and eventually it got to the point where she didn’t say a word to me for all of season six.
Lea and I definitely weren’t the best of friends, and I doubt we’ll ever sit on her couch and eat kale together again, but the rumors of our “feud” were blown out of proportion. Whenever anything good would happen for either her or me—when I got married, or when she started dating someone new—there would always be stories quoting anonymous sources that just swore up and down that we were still trashing and mocking each other. I never did that. I’d like to think that we both have better ways to spend our time, but as Santana and Rachel proved on Glee, a bitch fight, even a made-up one, does make for riveting drama.
In the end, I do wish that Lea and I had gotten along better, but I’m not losing sleep over it. I don’t trust people who claim to like everyone, because, really, how is that possible? If that is true, then you must not have any standards. If you care about your life, then there are going to be certain people you don’t want in it.
I also don’t think you can worry too much about it when someone doesn’t like you. I’m not saying you should never pay attention when people call you on your shit, but if you are committed to being your honest and authentic self, then you are going to piss a few people off here and there. You just have to learn how to not take it too personally, and definitely don’t obsess over it. It comes back to the idea of gratitude and being thankful for what you do have instead of focusing on what you don’t. So instead of worrying about who doesn’t like you, take some time to remember who does. And then go call them. Now.
SPELLING “LOVE” M-O-M
By this point in the book, you’ve probably already guessed that my mom and I are close. Well, the truth is that we’re closer than close. Ryan says he’s never seen anyone talk to their mom as much as I do. We talk at least three times a day, usually on FaceTime. I call her as soon as I find out something good, or something bad, whenever I’m excited, or whenever I panic (like the time when I was pregnant and thought I found a stretchmark on my boob. It was FaceTime, so she basically answered a call from my tit).
Mom’s my ultimate number one, and I’m hers. We’re best friends, family, and drinking partners. When I got pregnant with Josey, she was obviously super excited, but after a few months she was bored—with me off the sauce, she claimed there wasn’t anyone who would drink martinis and talk shit with her.
Me and my mom, two ride-or-die chicks.
As much as you can talk to your friends about what is going on in your life, I think it’s important to have someone who has more perspective. For me
, that’s my mom. I always go to her for advice, and I trust her to tell me the truth—be it good or bad. She hasn’t had the easiest life, but I’ve never heard her complain. She’s one tough lady, and I’d like to think she passed that on to me. It’s probably because I am so much like her that we did fight so hard core when I was in high school.
That, and hormones. When I try to think about why so many teenage girls go through a period of hating their mom, I think it has got to be hormones that make us stand at the top of the stairs and scream, “You don’t understand me! I wish I’d never been born!” before storming off into our room and slamming the door.
From the moms’ point of view, it has got to be hard to have to look at your daughters and say, “I don’t understand why you’re not getting it. I told you—I did that, and it turned out horribly, and you’re still going to do it?”
If I ever have a daughter, at least I’ll be able to literally throw this book at her and scream, “Oh yeah, I don’t understand?! Well, you can just read about all the shit that I did!”
Love you, Mom . . .
SORRY:
Everything about my bad-girls-club stint with Angie, and all the head-splitting hangovers that went with it.
Trying to base a friendship on superficial qualities.
That everything between Lea and me got so blown out of proportion.
All those times I scrawled “I HATE MY MOM” in my journal.
NOT SORRY:
That I have a few amazing friends instead of a bunch of so-so ones.
That I dropped Angie. Sometimes you have to cut people out of your life and not look back.
That I don’t always get along with everyone. Having people not like you is a risk you have to take to be real, and I’ll take that over being fake any day.
That my mom is a badass who’s always got my back. With her in my corner, I can do anything.
10
SORRY NOT SORRY
EVERYONE SHOULD WRITE a book.
No, I’m serious.
Break out your journal, open up a Word doc, grab a crayon—whatever it takes, do it now. When you set about putting your experiences down on paper—all the good stuff, the bad stuff, the times you got fucked over, and the times you fucked up—this amazing thing starts to happen.
You begin to have a whole new perspective.
You start to connect the dots.
You see that what you always regarded as a string of random events isn’t random at all.
Instead, it’s your life.
When I started writing this book, I knew I didn’t want it to be the kind of book everyone expected me to write, which was a trashy tell-all that talked a whole bunch of shit—I’ll write that book when I am eighty-five and just don’t give a fuck anymore. And even though as a teenager I stood in line at the Valencia Walmart to buy the Paris Hilton book (and get it signed), I didn’t want it to be that kind of book either—one filled with glamorous photos to illustrate the “perfect” celeb lifestyle.
I wanted to write a book that was real. One that was inspiring and that shed some light on the fact that growing up is hard, and that, contrary to what people try to tell you all the time, there is no such thing as a perfect life. We’re probably our most perfect right when we come out of our moms’ vag, but we just get more and more imperfect from there on out. That’s what makes us human—that we screw up, make bad decisions, and take wrong turns. We can only hope to learn from all of them, and maybe, if we’re lucky, laugh a little bit.
When I say “sorry not sorry,” I’m saying that I don’t regret any of the things that have happened in my life, and I attribute that directly to my relationship with God. Even in my worst moments, I had to trust that God had a plan for me. I might make mistakes, but He doesn’t.
I remind myself of that every day. I may be sorry that I did certain things and sorry about the consequences that I faced because of them. I may say sorry because I owe someone an apology, but I’m definitely not sorry that everything happened the way it did. I wouldn’t take any of it back, because if I did, then I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I wouldn’t have any good stories to tell. So when life gives me lemons, I say fuck it and drink champagne.
I always meditate on the idea of love, and I always want to be a source of love. God is love, and God is in everything, therefore everything can be love. I want to share that in whatever way I can, whether that’s being a source of light or happiness or even—especially in 2014—just a distraction. I hope that with this book, I can give a little love to someone who might recognize herself in these pages, and maybe that love will help her feel a little less alone.
I also think a lot about what it means to love yourself. Everyone is always telling you to love yourself, though no one ever tells you how to go about doing it. Learning how to love yourself is something everyone struggles with. I know that I wasn’t loving myself when I would go an entire day refusing to eat even an apple, or when I would go club-hopping in Hollywood rather than face up to the fact that I wasn’t doing anything productive with my life.
I love myself now—I’m happy with my career and have an incredible husband and a child that I love more than anything in the whole wide world. But even now, it’s hard. There’s still a thirteen-year-old girl inside me making detailed lists of how I can improve, who’s never sure of my own self-worth.
When I’m always moving full-speed ahead and thinking about what’s coming next, it’s hard to take a step back and say, “Naya, I love you,” but that’s what I’m trying to do now. After I had the abortion, I didn’t think I’d ever forgive myself, and if I’m being honest, I’m still not sure that I have. But I am closer than I ever have been before, and even if I can’t ever totally move past it, I am at least aiming for forgive and never forget.
I knew that I never wanted to have children until I could provide for them in a way that made us all comfortable, because I didn’t want them to have to go through what I did growing up. I wanted to own a house. I wanted to be with someone who possessed the qualities I admire in a guy: talent, kindness, a sense of humor, ambition (and, okay, really hot). When I take a step back, it blows my mind that I was able to achieve these things. I still have so much further to go, but, still, I feel successful already.
Success isn’t limited to money, awards, your dress size, or how long your IMDb page is. Success can be anything you want it to be—whether it relates to your career, your personal life, or the little things you want to do on a daily basis. If all you want to do on a given afternoon is get froyo—get it, and that’s success. Success is not defined by what the people around you want. It is based on what you want for yourself. People often lose sight of the truth that everyone has a different path toward success—it’s easy to fall into a hole of constantly comparing yourself to others. That’s a great way to sap your happiness and turn into an ungrateful bitch. “I only have three Prada bags and she has four! My life is the worst.” You don’t want to be that girl.
As funny as I now find my crazy junior high to-do lists, I am proud that I kept them. List making gives you a concrete and visual reference for what you want for yourself, much like a vision board does, and that’s important. It holds you accountable and can help get you back on track when you start to stray. Being ballsy enough to bullet-point your future gives you confidence, and this is the first step toward having the future you want. If you don’t have some way of checking in with yourself, you’re always just going to be bouncing around like a pinball, losing your direction and going whatever way seems to be the easiest.
I think I was born motivated and with my eyes on the prize, but I also don’t understand what the other options are.
Being lazy, not doing anything with your life, settling for less than your best, dwelling on every little thing that goes wrong—that is not the way to live. If that offends you, well, sorry—not sorry.
xo,
Naya
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my mother—you’re the love of my life and one ride-or-die chick. Thank you for everything.
To my Ryan—you’re a close second. ;-) Thank you for knowing exactly who I was from day one and always being all about it.
To my Josey—thank you for being the best part of my story and choosing me to be a part of yours.
To my family and friends, for countless late night talks, guidance, distractions, and love.
To everyone who made my dreams of being an author come true: Kate Williams for helping me shape these pages. Joanna, Sara, Lauren, Eric, Justin, UTA, Inkwell, and TarcherPerigee.
Lastly, to everyone I’ve ever liked, loathed, loved, kissed, bad-mouthed, slept with, dumped, hung out with, worked next to, or befriended. Without you, my story wouldn’t be what it is today. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naya Rivera is an actress and singer from Valencia, California. As a child, she appeared on Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The Royal Family. For six seasons, she played Santana Lopez on the hit show Glee. She lives with her husband, son, and two dogs in Los Angeles.
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