My Reality

by Melissa Rycroft

  I just did not have it in me to walk away. At the same time, Tye wasn’t making it easy, either, because he wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want to give me the deep relationship I craved, but he clearly wasn’t ready to lose me completely. Maybe he was keeping me at arm’s length because he had a fear of commitment. Or maybe he was just that naïve about relationships and didn’t realize what was required or what I deserved. Or maybe I was just that girl he called when he got bored. Who knows?

  It may have just been more denial on my part, but I became convinced that he would come back eventually and want me to be his girlfriend again. I just knew, somehow, that he wasn’t going to find somebody else and leave me for good. But I also started to understand that, in the times when we weren’t seeing each other, I was free to do whatever I wanted, just like I guessed he was doing at the time.

  It took a while, but that realization finally gave me a little bit of the independence I hadn’t had before. And, honestly, every time we’d get back together and then not talk again, it did make me slightly stronger. I was regaining some of my power, but it definitely came in baby steps. I was still very much in love with Tye, and so dating anyone else was out of the question. But I was at least functioning on my own during the times when we were not talking. I went out with my friends. I was slowly getting my life back together.

  But I definitely broke one of the Cardinal Rules of Girlfriends. If I had plans with my friends on a Saturday night, and Tye just happened to call me out of the blue, I immediately dumped my friends and went out with him. I know, I know: That’s like Rule Number One. But I couldn’t help myself.

  Finally, my friends had had enough. “Why do you let him do that?” they asked.

  I always had an excuse, and I always defended him.

  “Well, you know, he’s young,” I said. “He doesn’t mean to hurt me. I don’t even think he knows he’s hurting me; he’s just very wrapped up in what’s going on in his life right now. He’s only twenty-seven and not really ready to settle down . . . yet.”

  Of course, this argument didn’t fly with Reagan or Stefani. Both their husbands were twenty-five—younger than Tye—and these guys not only were married but were happy to be married. Well, that blew my theory.

  I had to admit to myself that guys who weren’t afraid of commitment and who wanted to settle down did exist. It wasn’t even that I wanted to be married right then, but I did want to be in a committed relationship, and I wanted the person who I wanted to be with to want to be with me. But, for right now, I was caught in a cycle. A bad cycle. And it didn’t show any sign of getting much better anytime soon. I was in breakup purgatory.

  I might not have been done with Tye yet, but my friends were. In a big way. They had seen me crying for the three months that Tye and I were apart, and they had seen me upset during the last few months when he kept coming in and out of my life. It also didn’t help matters that they didn’t even really know Tye, because he had never taken the time to meet them when we were dating. Maybe if he had, it would have been different. But as it was, although I was constantly saying what a great guy Tye was, they sure didn’t see it. They didn’t trust him. They didn’t like him. They didn’t want us to get back together again, because they were convinced I could do MUCH better.

  They finally tried to do something about it.

  That summer, we spent a lot of time out on Lake Dallas. My friend Stefani would always invite this guy along for me. So every weekend, it would be Stefani and Joe, Reagan and Sean, and then me and this random guy from Stefani’s church. Talk about awkward! He was attractive. He was great. I wanted to like him. I really did. But my heart just wasn’t in it. I knew I had already met the guy I wanted to be with. He just didn’t want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him.

  They were good friends, though, and they were determined and willing to try anything to make me happy. They just wanted to see me smile again. More than once, when I was out to dinner with the four of them, and our waiter happened to be young and attractive, Stefani or Reagan would egg him on.

  “Don’t you think she’s pretty?” they’d ask him, pointing at me.

  Oh my gosh!! Mortified!

  On the one hand, I was sitting there feeling totally embarrassed and pathetic. On the other hand, their positive reinforcement gave me the kind of attention I needed right then; that little something from a guy that said maybe I was worth wanting. My self-esteem was so low that it really helped to realize that if a guy could think I was pretty in a tank top with my hair in a ponytail, then maybe there was still hope for me. My friends might have been trying to embarrass me into another relationship; maybe they figured if they humiliated me enough, I’d give up and give in. But I guess I proved to be too stubborn for that strategy!

  Despite the machinations of my friends, I didn’t go on even one date that whole summer. I was still caught up in Tye, and I’ve always HATED dating. The idea of dating had never seemed fun to me, even when I wasn’t a complete emotional wreck. I could never stand how awkward first dates were. And now, all I did was compare all other guys to Tye. In my mind and heart, Tye had everything that I wanted in a partner and no one else could measure up. He talked about his nephews and niece all the time, so I knew he was family oriented. He had always wanted to open his own insurance agency, and was doing all he could to make that happen, so I knew he was ambitious. He was funny and always made me laugh. He was a lot of fun to be around because he didn’t take things too seriously (me being one of those things, unfortunately), and we always had a great time together. And of course I thought he was gorgeous—that helped!

  Stefani and Reagan knew me well enough to understand that they shouldn’t push me too hard to date other guys. But they were getting fed up with me. The two of them would roll their eyes whenever I talked about whatever latest thing Tye had done, bad or good. Just hearing his name was enough to make them crazy.

  One day I was over at Stefani’s house, and she finally snapped.

  “I don’t want to hear about it anymore,” she said. “I’m your best friend, and I’m here for you, but if you’re going to keep doing this to yourself, you can’t keep running to me when he breaks your heart again. Because we do this every week.”

  I couldn’t blame her for reacting that way. I understood why she and Reagan were tired of listening to me whine and moan. Heck, I was tired of whining and moaning. Despite Stefani’s words, I knew that she’d still be there to pick up my pieces and listen to me cry when I needed her to, because that’s what great friends do. But the whole situation had become almost as emotionally draining for her as it was for me.

  And then, I got frustrated, too. It dawned on me that, sometime during the breakup, I had not only lost my motivation to meet someone else, I had also lost my motivation in pretty much every other area of my life. I didn’t know if it was because I wasn’t challenged by my job, and I didn’t have any extracurricular activities I was passionate about, or whether it was because my personal life was a complete mess. I just knew that I felt completely paralyzed.

  I was at a crossroads emotionally, and my life was at a standstill. I constantly thought about how empty and hollow I felt. All I did, all day, every day, was sit and think about my failed relationship, and how—IN ONE DAY—my cube had gone from having happy pictures of Tye and me all over it, to having no decorations at all. It was like a metaphor for my life. I was stuck in this dark, empty space, and I didn’t know how to get out.

  I had that empty pit in my gut, and I just wanted it to go away, and Tye was just ONE factor that contributed to that pit (albeit, a big factor). I was not happy with where my career was. I was not happy having a home I didn’t like going home to (because it reminded me of Tye). I was not happy that I didn’t have the Cowboys to keep me occupied, and most of my friends were still on the squad. And I was not happy being alone. Even though I was with my friends all of the time at this point, ironically, I felt more alone than I ever had. So I just wanted a change from every
thing. Not limited to—but definitely including—Tye.

  I needed a BIG change: a change of scenery, a change of perspective, a change of direction in my life. I was itching to get out of Dodge. I didn’t want to be in Dallas anymore. I was thinking about relocating to Austin, and I visited there several times while contemplating whether or not the move would make me happy. I was thinking about going for my teacher’s certificate and becoming a teacher, and I still believe I will be a teacher someday. But I couldn’t bring myself to do anything.

  And then, one day that summer, I checked my mail, and there was an application for the television dating show, The Bachelor. I was totally dumfounded. The opening letter read: “Thank you for applying to be a candidate on The Bachelor . . .”

  What?? I never applied to be on anything. I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that if I wanted to. What the heck?

  Now, over the past six months, several of my girlfriends had joked that I should be on that popular television dating show The Bachelorette. They always told me that I had a lot of things going for me, and that I would absolutely get picked for the show. But I thought it was just my friends trying to cheer me up and make me feel better about myself. I certainly hadn’t taken them seriously. And I certainly hadn’t applied to be on any show.

  I couldn’t figure out how the application came to me, but I also knew that it couldn’t have been completely random. It wasn’t like they just handed them out to people at the supermarket. The materials revealed no clues. They thanked me for my interest in becoming a contestant, and included instructions that asked me to complete the entire questionnaire as honestly as possible and mail it back by a certain deadline.

  Hmmm . . .

  I took the application to work the next day, sat with one of my colleagues who was also a good friend, and got my cell phone out. One by one, I called each of my friends and asked them if they had somehow nominated me to be on The Bachelor. Finally, I got one of my girlfriends from the Cowboys, Kristen, on the phone, and her response wasn’t quite like anyone else’s.

  “You know, I might have,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

  Seriously?! You don’t remember if you signed me up to be a contestant on a national television show? Yeah, right. Someone’s busted. I found my culprit!

  After that mystery was solved, I decided to delve further into the “application.” As I’ve probably established by this point, I would have done pretty much anything to make my workday go by quicker. As I started flipping through the application materials, I noticed there were twenty-four pages of questions, all targeted at me.

  Wow. They could write a biography on someone with all of the information they wanted.

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to fill it out, since I wasn’t exactly doing anything with my life just then. Surely I wouldn’t make it. I’d just see how far I could go, just for fun. It gave me something new to focus on—a distraction—which I desperately needed in my life at that time. It certainly wasn’t anything I had a burning desire to do. To be totally honest, I had barely even seen the show. And I had always thought it was a little staged.

  Falling in love on TV? Really? With all those cameras?

  I just didn’t buy it.

  Anyhow, I filled out the questionnaire. The questions were pretty basic:

  Where are you from?

  Who are your friends?

  What do you like to do?

  And, of course, they wanted to know all about my romantic life. When I got to the questions about my love life and past relationships, I decided to leave out Tye. I suppose it was probably just another form of denial.

  If I leave it off the application, no one will ever know what really happened . . .

  I filled it all out and sent everything back in, along with a couple of photos, which were required. I wasn’t sure how long the whole process would take, since there wasn’t a time line included in the packet. So after I mailed the application, I kind of forgot all about it and continued on with my life.

  A few weeks later, I received another envelope in the mail from The Bachelor. I’d made it to the next round. How, I have absolutely no idea. Next up was to submit a video of myself answering a whole slew of new questions.

  I almost stopped right there. It was too much work. I didn’t have a video camera. And I didn’t really care enough to deal with all of this. Kristen and I were about to leave on a big, fun trip we had planned to Mexico with a couple of friends, even though I was completely broke at the time—emotionally and financially.

  I had filled Kristen in on what was happening throughout the audition process and had kept her updated on each new round that I had made it through. I told her about the video, and how I didn’t really want to do it. I was a little embarrassed and not really sure I was 100 percent interested. She somehow convinced me to just do it.

  We literally shot the video the morning we left for Mexico. And we had to go to my parents’ house to use their video camera. I laugh today when I see clips of that video on YouTube, because it’s so clear that I was already dressed for a Mexican vacation! It’s a terrible interview, really, because we were in such a rush, and I wasn’t that invested in the whole process. The only thing I remember saying was in answer to a question about how my relationships tended to end.

  That was easy.

  “I’m always the dumpee,” I said. “And I don’t understand why. I believe in love. I’ve got a tattoo on my back that says True Love, because I’m a firm believer. I just haven’t found it.”

  I shipped off the video, left for Mexico, and didn’t think twice about it. Surely they wouldn’t be interested in the quick, sloppy interview I’d submitted. It was fun to play the “what if?” game, but I was still planning to move on with my life, as if there was no possibility that anything would happen with the show.

  Until, that is, the producers contacted me to say that they wanted to meet me in person.

  What?!? How did I actually make it to the next round?

  Again, I couldn’t understand how, or why, they still wanted to meet with me. Looking back, maybe they saw how cracked and fragile I was at the time—even though I’d tried my best to mask my heartbreak. I suppose I’ll never know for sure.

  It was now Labor Day weekend. I was vacationing with my family on an island off the coast of Florida. It was a Rycroft family tradition; we’d gone there every summer for the past twenty-four years. I remember this trip being particularly uncomfortable for me. My younger brother, Christopher, had brought along his girlfriend, which was great, except that there I was, single and auditioning for a TV dating show, which my parents had made clear they really didn’t want me to do. Not exactly the impression I wanted to make as an older sibling.

  There were only two days I could choose to fly to Los Angeles for the audition, and so I had to leave vacation a few days early to meet with the producers.

  I wasn’t nervous or anxious at all. I never thought I would make it, and so the whole experience just seemed beyond belief. Once I got to LA, there was a car waiting to take me to the hotel where we were meeting. Once we arrived there, a producer was outside waiting to greet me. She seemed nice enough.

  Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

  She showed me to my room to drop off my bag, then escorted me immediately to where all the producers were set up.

  First I did a one-on-one interview with a producer. She asked me a few generic questions that I’m sure everyone’s been asked at one time or another, and I simply answered them the best I could.

  So I answered, smiled, and had fun with the process. I didn’t answer anything too seriously—I wanted to be funny and show that I had a sense of humor.

  After the one-on-one interview, I was led into a room where—without any warning—I was suddenly face-to-face with a slew of producers, who were all sitting around a table staring at me. They made me sit up front and face them all.

  Intimidate much?!

  The strange thing was that I still wasn
’t the least bit nervous. While I was sitting there, I had this thought that made me feel totally calm: They can’t ask me a question I don’t know the answer to because it’s all about me.

  I also thought of it as a charade to see if I could cover up how I was really feeling, which was still about as heartbroken as I’d ever been. I never cried on camera. I never said anything directly about my relationship with Tye. I was acting like this really strong, independent woman. And it worked. (Well, I think it did. But, then, for all I know, they might have been on to me the whole time.) Even though I was still a mess inside, there was something about pretending to be put together that started to make me feel like I was that powerful woman I wanted to be, and that made it all easier.

  It helped, too, that, somehow, I immediately had a good sense of my boundaries. They knew that I had been a professional cheerleader, and one of the producers tried very hard to get me to do a cheer.

  I can’t be THAT girl. If I dance and cheer now, they’ll expect me to dance and cheer on the TV show . . . and that’s just not me.

  I smiled to make sure I didn’t seem rude.

  “I don’t really cheer,” I said. “I mean, the cheerleaders are dancers anyhow. They’re not cheerleaders.”

  “Well, then, do a dance,” the producer said. “We want to see a dance.”

  I could tell that they wanted to see how far I’d go on TV.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’d rather not. I’m not really comfortable doing that. And I’m not dressed appropriately.”

  There was their answer to how far I would go: not far at all.

  When I left, I figured I had totally blown it, because I didn’t do what they wanted me to do. They probably wanted me to be that girl who would be THE DANCER on the show. But I didn’t care. I was glad that I hadn’t compromised myself. (How ironic that it actually took me doing a television show that I didn’t really care about to inspire me to stand up for myself, and launch a change in my life that played a big role in my destiny.)