Bulletproof

by Maci Bookout

  I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be on my own with Bentley where I didn’t have anyone questioning me. I wanted to be an adult. And as always, there was another side to it, as well. As much as it was driving me insane to feel like others were meddling with my parenting, I also knew I was getting too used to the help. I was so accustomed to having my parents or Ryan’s parents there when I needed them that I was afraid I was becoming too dependent on that privilege. It was to the point where if I wanted to go and do anything, whether it was a night out with my girlfriends or a trip to Panama City, I had no doubt that my parents or Ryan’s parents would be willing to step in and help. The last thing I wanted to be was ungrateful, but it really went back to that old lesson my mom taught me. I needed to know that I could fix my own flat tires if I had to. I just wanted to be by myself with Bentley and learn how to figure things out on my own.

  The last big reason I had for moving to Nashville was the sense of loneliness that just wouldn’t stop nagging at me. Even though I was looking forward to living in Kyle’s city and finally being able to build our relationship, at the same time, I wanted to rediscover how to be comfortable with being alone. It was a personal goal for me. I wanted to conquer those spells of sadness and isolation that had started to drift in when I found myself alone at night. It felt like a weakness to fear being alone, and since that was such a new feeling, I wanted to believe I could find a way to beat it. I wanted to rebuild my sense of independence and the strength that came with it.

  It was time for me to go out into the world and find myself. I wasn’t going very far on an actual map, but it was a big positive step for me. I had the idea in my mind that if I didn’t have Bentley, I would have been at college. I’d never moved away, not really, and I didn’t know what it was like. To me it seemed like the act of moving to another city offered all of these milestones that would push me to be a stronger person and a better adult. The more I thought about moving to Nashville, the more hopes and possibilities I started attaching to it. In a way, my dream was that if I took that road and experienced those typical moments of self-discovery, I’d fix everything up and I’d be happy.

  Before I moved I had a job at a high-end restaurant in Chattanooga. Combining that with some of what I made through MTV, I was able to save up a good amount of money for Nashville. By May, I was ready to make the move. So I packed up with Bentley and off we went.

  CHAPTER 14:

  A BEAUTIFUL MESS

  When you want to start fresh and there’s a big mess in your way, it’s always going to get worse before it gets better. The deeper you are in your problem and the less sure you are of how to deal with it, the more this is true. For me in Nashville, it took awhile before I started being able to see through the dust and clutter and start looking ahead with more confidence. But I was excited from the get-go to start the mission.

  I moved into a house about a twenty-minute drive from Kyle’s, which was a considerably more comfortable distance than the three hours that was between us when I lived in Chattanooga. And it wasn’t too close, either. The point of Nashville was not to be around Kyle twenty-four seven. It was to find my bearings, on my own — with Bentley, of course — in a stable setting where there wasn’t so much interference. That was my goal, and I dived right in.

  Just as I hoped, putting some space between me and Chattanooga allowed me to relax and think freely about my own attitude and plans for the future. That was how Nashville helped me. It was kind of like being able to drive by myself for the first time after I’d been stuck with a learner’s permit for way too long. Figuring out how to be a good mom, a grown adult, and an independent person in Chattanooga was like trying to become a better driver without ever heading out of the neighborhood. How much can you learn from turning the same corners over and over? Especially when every day brings the same traffic jams and jerk drivers, not to mention a bunch of other people in the car reminding me when to hit the breaks or turn on the blinker. Somehow I’d managed not to crash the car, but I was long overdue to hit the open road. That was what Nashville felt like. It wasn’t instant perfection, but it felt good to be in a new place with Bentley where I could soul search a little bit.

  Parenting brought new challenges, pleasures and surprises all the time. Bentley was just a summer and change away from turning two, which opened up our life to a little more variety. He was getting to the point where I could take him to the playground and push him on a swing and run around. There was no shortage of fun or cuteness. But again, your child can’t be your best friend. At least, especially not at that age. It’s not as if there’s room for real conversation with a kid so small. It was always fun and rewarding to run around the park and play, and it was a happy distraction from the things that were troubling me. But at the same time, I couldn’t shake the melancholy feeling that it shouldn’t have been just me and him. My relationship with Kyle was not in any way a magical solution. We were off to a great start, but for the time being, there was still a void and an ache I felt when I had to remember I was still on my own in the parenting game.

  It’s almost impossible to be a teen mom without feeling lonely. Forget about Ryan. What about friends? None of mine had kids, so I couldn’t bond with them as far as that was concerned. Our interests had split off in different directions so severely it was like a continent breaking in half. They couldn’t relate to what I was going through, and I had a hard time relating to their priorities. What typical teen girl wants to talk about babies and responsibilities all the time? And what’s important to them that’s also important to a teen girl with a child? Growing up too fast is always lonely.

  When I did meet women who had toddlers of their own, they were around my mom’s age. That came with its own kind of awkwardness. I liked hanging out with people who were older than me, but I didn’t want to feel like the baby of the group. Especially not in a group of moms. Women my mom’s age saw me more as a daughter than a peer, and I was wary of being patronized or reminded of my age all the time. There’s a reason you don’t see many unmarried nineteen-year-old girls hanging out with a bunch of married couples with kids. The fact that I had one of my own didn’t make the generation gap disappear. This is just one more way in which being a teen mom can be an incredibly isolating experience.

  Sometimes I felt like I was missing out by not having any “mommy friends.” But at the same time, moms in groups can be so judgmental. Anyone who has read the comments on any parenting article or heard about the “mommy wars” that rage online has seen as much. No matter how well you raise your kid, there will always be another parent chiming in to tell you you’re on the wrong side of one issue or another. There’s a fierce debate attached to just about every parenting decision, from breastfeeding to discipline to bedtimes to school lunches. It is literally impossible to avoid it. Get any group of moms together and there will almost always be some degree of side-eye in the room.

  Plus, hanging out with other moms means dealing with their kids. And yes, I had my own opinions, too. Just because I keep them to myself doesn’t mean I’ve never judged anyone else’s parenting style. I’ve always been a no-bullshit kind of mom. I tried really hard to never let Bentley act like a moron or act up in public. I’ve also never been super overprotective. The way I was raised, and the way I raised him, kids were disciplined but still given the freedom to run around and learn things independently. If Bentley wanted to climb up on top of something and wouldn’t listen to me when I told him it was a bad idea, I’d let him figure that out for himself. As long as I didn’t see any real danger or risk of injury, it seemed more sensible to let him fall and learn from the mistake. That’s just my approach. It’s pointless to try and raise a kid in a bubble, and I feel it would just make it more difficult to learn his way around the world by using his own head. On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of moms who force people to use hand sanitizer before letting them near their kids. That’s just not my thing.

  Of course, I never had the option of sh
ielding myself from all parental criticism. Not that anyone should be completely shielded from criticism. But I was on TV, and you sure as hell can’t hide there.

  ***

  After 16 & Pregnant ended, I was asked to continue filming for the spinoff series Teen Mom. It was a tough decision. Obviously, being on MTV completely changed my life. No one expected 16 & Pregnant to be as big as it was. No one expected a one-off documentary on teen pregnancy to turn into what it did. I didn’t realize, and I’m sure the other girls didn’t either, that the show would be the start of several years of pretty intense media coverage. A few talk shows are one thing. But crazy headlines in tabloid magazines? Paparazzi showing up in our towns? Thousands and thousands of viewers weighing in on our lives through social media and comments sections? None of that ever entered my mind as a possibility. But that was what happened.

  As an introverted person, I wasn’t happy to realize that all of these people suddenly thought of me as Maci from MTV. It felt like losing control of my ability to make my own impression on people. After I became such a public figure, I had to come to terms with the fact that almost everyone I met had already formed their own opinions of me. More specifically, a lot of them felt like they knew me. That’s a double-edged sword if ever there was one. On one hand, the entire reason I embraced my place on Teen Mom was because I wanted to connect with others who were in my shoes, and more importantly to connect with young girls who could avoid being in my shoes. And the entire point of being the subject of a documentary is to give people a chance to know you and understand you. On the other hand, it was hard to navigate a lot of the interactions I had with people who had certain expectations of me based on what they’d seen, when for me the reality was obviously much more complex than a well-edited TV series could ever show.

  It was humbling and awkward at the same time to realize that I had fans. When people approached me to introduce themselves or ask for photos, I never knew how to react. I felt like if I was super bubbly and happy to be approached, it would come off as a kind of snobbiness or a silly attitude about my own status. But I didn’t want to seem unfriendly or unappreciative, either. It was hard to be graceful and humble. Then there was the fact that sometimes I was just trying to get through my day like a normal person. When you’re in the supermarket with a one-year-old and you’re exhausted and trying to finish shopping so you can get home and wrap up your day, it’s hard to deal with strangers approaching you to talk about your life and your relationships. But I always tried to be as nice as I could. I’d be an idiot not to know that if it wasn’t for those fans, I would never have had the opportunity to do the show or the platform to share my experience as a teen mom.

  Plus, the positive responses have always meant the world to me. One of the biggest things that kept me going with the show was when moms in their thirties and forties would come up to me to say, “I have a thirteen year old kid and if it wasn’t for your show coming on every week, I would never have had such a good chance to talk to them about birth control.” I often heard that the show made it easier to talk to their kids about sex, pregnancy, and protection without it being as awkward as it often can be.

  Then there was the other side. There were other times when I met people who said things like, “I wish that show would have been around when I got pregnant,” or “If I’d known I could have been on it!” They weren’t saying they wanted to get pregnant to get on TV, but they had a distorted idea of what it really entailed. Sometimes I just wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. I wanted to tell them, yes, financially it was obviously a blessing, but if you’ve never filmed a TV show like that, you have no idea how stressful it can be. No one knows how much work it is and how exhausting it gets. It’s your real life and your real struggles out there for the world to see, and the world isn’t shy about commenting. How do you feel when people talk about you behind your back? How would you feel if you saw someone criticizing you in writing for everyone to see? Imagine if it was the entire world. Because that is what it feels like. When you get three million viewers a week, that many people are judging you. Someone has something to say about every little thing you do, and they don’t hesitate to say it. I’ve read and heard it all.

  The idea that the shows glamorized teen pregnancy is something I’ve heard countless times. It was always astonishing to me that anyone could watch the show and not see how brutal and sad it was. Many of the struggles depicted on the show were heart-wrenching. Fortunately, most people do seem to get that. The ones who watch the shows and come away thinking, “Wow, I really want to be a teen mom now” are an extreme minority compared to the rest. There was never anything on that show that could have been interpreted by any reasonable person as an advertisement in favor of teen pregnancy.

  The show had an impact on my personal life, too. It definitely influenced my relationships, especially with Ryan. The dads who appeared on the show got a lot of attention, too, and it was the kind of attention that made it seem a lot more fun to be absent as a boyfriend and a dad. Then there’s the fact that when you watch the show after filming, you see conversations happen that you weren’t there for. It’s sort of like getting to see what people are saying behind your back. That definitely created a wedge that was difficult to look beyond, and not just with Ryan. We all made an effort not to let it affect us, but it did. With a documentary series, the producers and crew get to pack up and go back home to their lives when work is done. But reality continues when the cameras are gone. The people being featured have to deal with the consequences of what’s been filmed, what’s been said, and what’s been started. It’s very difficult to keep all that in check.

  Even the process of making friends changed after I started appearing on the show. Going out and meeting people, I had to learn the difference between people who wanted to get to know me as a person and people who wanted to be friends with “Maci from Teen Mom.” Believe it or not, there are plenty of the second kind out there. But I got used to it pretty quickly, and eventually I could tell right off the bat who was who.

  That was one more way Nashville made it easier for me to stretch my limbs and kind of smooth out my steering. In Nashville I had a good circle of friends I already trusted for understanding and support, including my best friend, Kyle.

  Little by little, I started to straighten things out. But, again, the loneliness got worse before it got better. In fact, at first I felt more alone than ever. The main part was still the nights when I was alone and Bentley had gone to sleep. I’d sit up at nine or ten all alone and start feeling sorry for myself. But I didn’t run from it. I tried to remind myself how many women out there would love to be a mom, even a single mom, and especially with a kid like Bentley. He always inspired me to fight for positivity, too. I never let myself get emotional in front of him. I couldn’t be a miserable mom. I wouldn’t. I was always telling myself, “You have to make it through this and be happy, because Bentley needs you to be.”

  What helped the most was being self-aware. Eventually I got to a point where when I started feeling lonely, I recognized it as a mood I was in and didn’t let it take over my mind. It still sucked, but instead of feeling so deeply sad, I learned not to let it get me down. I wasn’t a victim to it anymore. I finally started to feel like I could handle it.

  CHAPTER 15:

  12 THINGS YOU LEARN AS A REALITY TV STAR

  1. You stop caring what you look like on camera.

  In an everyday situation, I consider myself to be low-maintenance. But when I knew I was going to be on TV, of course I tried a little harder. The first few times we filmed for 16 & Pregnant, I was putting on makeup, doing my hair, and laying out my outfits the night before. That unraveled quickly. When you’re filming a documentary or reality TV and the point is to forget the cameras aren’t there, you stop going out of your way to be ready for a close-up. By the third or fourth time we filmed, I was back to my usual no-makeup state. I probably didn’t even brush my hair. After that, whether the cameras were on
or not, I was probably in jeans and a tee shirt.

  2. Your show makes all your first impressions for you.

  As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. It’s a little nerve-wracking to think about that after you’ve put your life and your personality on display for millions of people. Every time you meet someone who’s seen you on TV, you know they’ve already formed at least some trace of an opinion by the time they see you in person. It’s hard to feel like you can make that important first impression when you meet someone new, because it feels like you’ve already made it on half the world. And there are no take-backs.

  3. You never get used to being approached by strangers.

  It’s so wonderful to have fans and to meet people who say nice things about your show and what it meant to them. But even the coolest interactions with fans can make you nervous and self-conscious about how you’re supposed to act. If you act bubbly and friendly like it’s the most natural thing in the world, it might come across like you’ve started to think of yourself as a celebrity. But if you look too startled or even too laid back, you could seem cold or unfriendly. Figuring out how to be gracious and humble in those situations is actually kind of difficult.