My Reality (18 page)

Hmmm . . . I walk kinda funny. . .

I didn’t know my voice was quite that annoying. . . .

I cringed watching myself. And knowing what was going to happen, both on the show and in its aftermath, made watching the show even worse. Not only that, but when I saw myself on the show, it felt like I was watching some other girl who wasn’t me. I looked so young and naïve. All right folks, I get that it had happened only four months earlier . . . but I just looked like a lost little girl to me. Only a handful of people knew what I was going through right before
The Bachelor
started taping, and although I think I hid it from most people, looking back . . . I could see that lost girl.

During the show’s airing was a really hard time for me. I was
in this weird limbo, where Jason and I weren’t really talking anymore, and Tye and I weren’t really talking, either. And so, everything in my life felt shaky and uncertain. Especially me. Why did everything seem to be so difficult? The emotional cycle just
would not end.

I can’t even accurately describe the emotional stress that I was going through at the time the show was actually airing. Let’s recap: I had been madly in love with Tye in Dallas; gotten my heart completely shattered by Tye; then he kind of decided he wanted me back . . . but only occasionally; I went on
The Bachelor
journey looking for a new direction for my life; I met Jason and fell for him; I got
engaged
to him; Tye decided that he wanted me back, permanently, but I was finally in a place where I was angry at him and didn’t want to talk to him; my relationship with Jason was a struggle; I was in limbo with my relationship to both Tye and Jason. And oh yeah, add the fact that I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was dealing with, and that’s just about the perfect recipe for an emotional disaster.

Little did I know, that the next event that took place in my life would be the most life-changing incident ever. We had finished filming
The Bachelor
for about three months, and now it was time to film the “After the Final Rose” special. I was dreading having to face that situation. A huge part of me was humiliated that I had gotten so wrapped up in the process, and another part of me was humiliated that we were going to have to admit that we were not as happy and in love as we looked when we got engaged.

Are we supposed to talk about how great things were between us? Or are we supposed to be honest and say that things had become very awkward? Would we decide to make it work? Or would we decide to part ways?

It’s really sad that Jason and I weren’t even really talking by this point. We had a few phone conversations about filming the “After” special, but nothing really substantial. I definitely felt uncomfortable. He and I were long past pretending that we were so in love and happy, or even still engaged. We both knew that we weren’t really together, and I didn’t expect that we were going to pretend that we were a couple for the cameras. But there had been no official end, either. Neither one of us had actually suggested that we should just cut the ties and make a public announcement, or at least start telling anybody who asked us that we weren’t together anymore. So I had no idea what our actual status was.

The night before I flew to Los Angeles to tape “After the Final Rose,” Tye invited me over for dinner. When I got to his condo, it was clear that he had planned a date-type evening for us. It was almost an exact repeat of the night we had together, right before I left for
The Bachelor.
Again, he had even gotten takeout from my favorite restaurant, Sushi Zushi. But he had put a lot more thought into making this night special than he had ever done before. When I saw that he had my favorite rolls, I looked at him and thought,
I didn’t even know you knew what my favorite stuff was.

We went upstairs to the roof and had a nice conversation while we ate. It wasn’t exactly romantic, which I think was better for me, given everything else I had going on at the time. Really, Tye and I were just enjoying the feeling of reconnecting as we talked. And there was a lot to catch up on. I’d missed two months of life in Dallas while I was on
The Bachelor
, and so we went over everything he and his buddies had been up to, and his family, and my family. In some ways, the conversation was pretty on the surface. But it was always more than that with us. And it was such a relief to talk so easily after all of the awkwardness during my phone calls with Jason. Tye and I never ran
out of stuff to say. It was always one thing after another with us, with lots of laughing and jokes. I felt like I had my buddy back, but better.

I was impressed by how much care Tye had put into the night. And I could tell that he was listening to me and taking note of things I said in a way that he never had done before. At the end of dinner, he didn’t want me to go home. Things definitely felt different than they had before. The power had shifted, and I wasn’t this scared little girl begging for his affection anymore. He wanted me there. That night, he became my confidant. Someone I could finally talk to about everything I had been going through and feeling. It sounds odd that the person I ended up confiding in was someone I had once been so in love with, but it just felt so natural and easy to talk to him. That’s when I decided to start letting him in on what was going on with
The Bachelor.

“I have to go film this ‘After the Final Rose’ thing soon,” I said.

“I don’t want you to go do that,” he said. He actually looked nervous.

Maybe he didn’t want me to leave him again. Maybe he just didn’t want me to see Jason, out of fear that it would rekindle the feelings that we had felt. I don’t know. It was just a small moment, and not enough to give me real clarity or comfort during a time when both of the major relationships in my life were in such a weird place. But it felt good to hear him say that he wanted me to stay, since it had been him telling me to go that had originally set this whole crazy odyssey in motion.

I remember thinking that night how I felt just being with Tye . . . not dating him, not wooing him, but just sitting and talking with him. And it felt great. It was a feeling I had never experienced with Jason. And to be frank, I didn’t even get to experience it with Tye when we had dated previously. He had never really let me into the place that he did that night on his roof. We were both vulnerable,
and leaning on each other, and enjoying our
friendship
for really the first time.

The next day, I took off for Los Angeles to face the dreaded “After the Final Rose” taping. I was getting very anxious just sitting on the plane. I was about to face people who I hadn’t seen in months . . . most important the man who I was
engaged
to but had such an awkward relationship with. I had no idea what was about to happen, or what we were going to do. And the fact that my communication with Jason had basically ceased, I wasn’t getting much direction from him.

I began replaying the entire experience in my head. What I felt when I first saw Jason . . . reliving our first date . . . remembering our proposal. How would I feel when I saw him? Would it make me remember how I felt on the show? Would I get angry as to how things turned out? Would I be able to confront Jason about why he didn’t at least try to make this work? Did I even care?

So many questions were swirling in my head, and I just had a huge pit in my stomach. And it was so weird that Jason and I hadn’t talked
at all
about what we were going to do or say. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.
Why hadn’t Jason talked to me before we came here to film this? Aren’t I at least owed that? I mean, he friggin’
proposed
to me!
And here I was, having to face him after months, and talk about our relationship in front of the camera. I didn’t want to talk about what was going on, or wrong, in our relationship with cameras rolling. I felt they were conversations that needed to take place privately first.

I was sitting backstage, just about to walk on the stage with Jason and host Chris Harrison, and I had all of these emotions bottled up inside of me, which was the perfect combustible material for good TV. One wrong word was going to make all of my feelings come pouring out in a way that I was afraid I was going to regret later.

To start off the segment, they showed the footage from the day we got engaged in New Zealand. Now, keep in mind, the show was still airing at this time, so none of us had seen the proposal—neither I nor Jason. And watching it made me tear up. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know why. Part was sadness, part was embarrassment. . . . I was definitely overwhelmed, and the emotional ride I’d been on felt like it was about to explode.

I awkwardly walked out on stage . . . I didn’t even know whether I should hug Jason or not. And I was so upset that this was now going to be discussed publicly, that I was literally shaking. Chris set Jason up to start talking, and Jason launched into this big speech about how he’d wanted to give me everything when he proposed to me, but he now felt like things had changed between us.

He fidgeted in his seat while he talked, “I mean, our conversations over the last few weeks have been how things are different . . . How
I
feel like things are different. And we both just watched and saw everything that we’ve been through. Which every single moment of that experience, for me, was true. I completely fell in love with you . . . I knew on that last day that I wanted to give you everything. I wanted to give you my life, I wanted to give you everything you deserved. But I feel like things are different.”

My blood began to boil.
He didn’t have the decency to say this to me off camera? He had to wait until I was thrown in front of millions of people?
I could only shake my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe we were having
this
conversation for the first time in front of millions of people!

Jason continued, “I came here to find somebody to spend my life with . . . I . . . We’re not right for each other.” He stopped, and waited for me to react.

“I don’t know what you want me to say when you sit there and
say that, because I
don’t
believe you.” I was literally shaking from anger. Now I was angry that I had just watched this proposal, and heard him say how much he loved me, and wanted to give me everything, and couldn’t wait to start a life with me. . . . And now, it’s just changed. He had made a commitment to be with me forever.
HE
made the decision to ask me to marry him.
HE
was the one who had been through the experience before, and knew how easy it was to get wrapped up in the process.
HE
was the one who should have known better! And
HE
didn’t even want to fight for the relationship. I didn’t want him to fight for it now, but he didn’t fight for it when it was brand-new . . . when things had started to turn . . . he didn’t even try to see if it could work.

I continued on my rant, “I do not see how you can sit there and say what you said to me: ‘I love you,’ ‘I want to spend my life with you,’ ‘I want to make you happy’. . . and then the second, the
second
you start having doubts, you don’t talk to me about it and say ‘let’s work on this, let’s fight. I just put a ring on your finger, so let’s see what we can do to fix this.’ No, it’s ‘I’m just gonna pull away. Whoaa, things are different, and I don’t even want to try.’” My voice started to shake as I fought back tears. “Do you see where I’m a
little
irritated?”

I glared at him, unable to see anything likeable or good about the man who I had been sure, just a few months ago, was going to be my future husband.

“Of course,” he said calmly, “You have every right to be irritated.”

“What did I do?” I interrupted him.

He shook his head emphatically. “You didn’t do anything.”

I totally didn’t believe him. How could he decide to propose to me, and then suddenly back away because ‘things changed?’

“No, something happened! And you have yet to be honest with me at all, except to say ‘I’m sorry.’” I was not going to let him off
the hook. He was going to give me some sort of an explanation. ‘I’m sorry’ was not going to cut it. I stared at him with such anger, until he began his explanation.

“So going back to that final day, what I realized is that I was falling in love with two people at the same time. At the exact same time. And maybe I wasn’t the right person to come and do all this, because I didn’t think there was any capacity in the world to fall for two people at the same time.” He kept looking down when he spoke.

What is he trying to say? That he loved both me and Molly equally? How then, can you make the enormous decision to ask one to marry you, when you are in love with another??

And them—BAM!—out it came! Attacking me like hundreds of knives stabbing my body.

“I still have feelings for Molly.”

Well there you go. How could I have been so blind? I was suddenly furious. It all suddenly made total sense to me. Of course he gave up on our relationship. He was starting a new one with someone else. I had tried very hard to make the relationship succeed, when all along he hadn’t really put anything into it. So, while I was shopping for his son and sending him funny texts, he was talking to another girl. And once again, I felt like the girl who just wasn’t good enough. My stomach started to hurt.

“Have you been talking to her?” I asked angrily.

“No,” he answered quickly. Too quickly for my liking.
Well of course. Why would he tell me even if he had been talking to her?

“I mean, I think the worst thing in the world is to live your life with regrets,” he said.

Oh my gosh! Just stop talking already!

“You’re such a bastard,” I said under my breath. I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as I was at that moment.

He continued. “And I don’t regret anything with you. You are exactly what I was looking for when I came here. And I told you that. And that’s the whole truth. But I learned a lot about myself over these past three months.”