God Bless This Mess(38)

“What?” I said. “Why?”

He said it was because I’d had sex with another guy.

My chin just about hit the floor. I stared at him, thinking, How dare you?

Brady had gone off and had sex with other girls he did not love. Then he started dating this girl who was a quintessential good girl. I knew from mutual friends that she had never even been kissed, so of course she was a virgin, which made the whole thing worse for me, because he’s the one who took my virginity. And now he was thinking I’m not wife material anymore because I had sex? Twice? With one other guy who I was in love with? A guy I thought I was gonna marry?

It was just about the most one-sided, misogynistic double standard I’d ever heard.

And it killed me.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. My stomach turned in knots, and I started losing a ton of weight from the anxiety and guilt and shame of the whole situation. Over and over I kept thinking, how had I messed this up so badly? I’d given up the best guy ever . . . for this?

Now I was stuck in the monotony of what living in Tuscaloosa had become for me, living with my parents, with no boyfriend, and not knowing what to do with my life.

“You need to get your mind off it,” my mom told me. “You need to do something fun. Why don’t you go for Miss Alabama again?”

“USA?”

“Yeah.”

The thought of it surprised me. I did love being onstage. I loved performing. Even though I had stopped doing pageants and slipped into a period of depression, in part because of the pressures of the pageant world, I remembered those few minutes onstage as being some of my happiest moments ever. Maybe my mom was right.

“Mom, the pageant’s in like two weeks. There’s no way.”

“If I call them and they say you can do it, will you do it?”

My mind was spinning. I was so sure they’d say no that I told my mom, “Sure.”

Mom called back and told me that Paula, the pageant director, said I could do it. “But you have to fill out all the information today.”

“Today?”

Normally I spent the whole year prepping for a big pageant like that. I would pay somebody to tell me what to write on my bio. How could I possibly do it that day? How could I possibly get ready in two weeks?

My friends were like, “Just do it. It doesn’t matter. You look great . . . go!”

I did sort of miss the pageant world. I missed some of the people. I missed getting all dressed up and working so hard to achieve something. I definitely missed the feeling of being up onstage. But most of all, it felt like it would be the perfect distraction from everything I was feeling.

So I went for it.

I pulled up old Google docs of previous applications, put in what I thought still mattered, and sent it in. I had stopped dyeing my hair, so I couldn’t use my old headshot. The only photo I had was more of a cool, edgy type shot that a guy took of me for his photography portfolio. It wasn’t a typical glam shot at all. But it’s all I had. So I sent it.

We went to a dress shop, tried on a dress, and bought it. We tailored some of the stuff in my closet, and that was all we had time to do. I caught up on some current events, and before I knew it, the two weeks was up.

There’s nothing like being overwhelmed and busy to keep you from having to feel the pain of a breakup!

There’s probably not anything less healthy, either.

Driving to Montgomery for the weekend pageant with my mom, I said, “What am I doing?”

We were laughing about how quickly we’d thrown it all together.

“I must enjoy losing,” I said. “I guess I’m a first-place loser. We should get T-shirts made that say ‘First-Place Loser!’”

My mom laughed. “Just go and have fun,” she said.

We didn’t tell anybody I was entering the pageant, so I didn’t have my usual cheering section—but I also had none of the pressure.

As soon as we got there, everyone seemed to notice that I’d lost a ton of weight. I was at my lowest competition weight ever—and every single person I ran into told me how great I looked. “Wow, Hannah. You are stunning! How did you get so skinny?”

“Well, it wasn’t on purpose. I broke up with my boyfri—”

“Ohhhh,” they said. “Breakup skinny is the best kind of skinny. Good for you!”

I took their compliments as best I could, and I just ran with them. With no potato-chip-colored hair and no time to prepare, I got up on that stage and I gave it all I had to give. I didn’t try to be anybody other than myself—and I made it to the Top 5.

Then they announced the second runner-up, and all that was left was two of us.

I stood onstage with the prior year’s runner-up, and she grabbed hold of my hands and started saying a little prayer for us both, and I thought for sure she was going to win. The competition was hers to lose. And all of a sudden they announced the winner, and the audience started cheering, and I didn’t even hear what they said.

“Hannah,” the girl said, squeezing my hands and looking me in the eye. “It’s you!”

“What?” I looked around, and I realized I’d won!

Instead of gracefully putting my hand over my heart or putting my hands over my mouth in the ladylike pose I’d practiced since I was a toddler, I raised my arms in victory and started jumping up and down like I’d just won a game of Uno at home with my family.