God Bless This Mess(47)

Looking back, I’m just so proud of how I had come into my own during that season. I was so much more certain of what I wanted at that point than I’d ever been in my life. I was so plugged-in after all the journaling and reflection I’d done, and how free I’d felt to just be me on that show, that the truth came pouring out of me through all of the pain and the hurt.

A couple of years later, when I saw Colton come out as gay on Good Morning America, I’d see that same freeness for him—and it made me happy. (It also helped me to better understand why things just felt a little off between us—because he felt off with himself. He wasn’t living the truth.) I didn’t understand yet—not deeply, yet—what it meant to live the most private parts of your life on a television show. To feel like you couldn’t be 100 percent who you are.

If I’d had some time to take it all in, to really live with it after the show ended, who knows where I would be today? But I didn’t have time to do that—because next thing I knew, the producers were calling me, asking if I would like to audition to be the next Bachelorette.





Chapter 15


Skrrrrrip!


I was sitting in a hotel room, eating a cheeseburger with a chocolate and a vanilla milkshake, alternately crying and trying to repack all of my things, when some people from the show expressed interest in making me the next Bachelorette.

It had only been a few hours since Colton broke up with me.

“Eff you, guys!” I said. (Actually, I used the real F-word.) “There’s no way. I’m hurt. And you’re already talking to me about this?”

I went home feeling butt-hurt and rejected—again—and thinking I was done with reality TV.

That girl in the limo—that was me. Raw. Vulnerable. Open. Strong. Independent. Confident that I was meant for something “big,” something bold, something better than what I had just experienced.

In that moment of pain, some of the very best parts of me all got pushed to the surface, all at once.

My parents and friends noticed a change in me the moment I got home. The show hadn’t aired yet, so no one back home had any idea what had happened. They could assume I didn’t get engaged, because Colton never came to our house to meet my family.

But my family picked up on the fact that I was walking in with a confidence that wasn’t there when I left; a sort of ownership of who I was, even though I was confused, and disappointed that I’d been rejected by a guy who checked so many boxes on paper, and who I went in believing I could trust. “Wow, you actually stood up for yourself!” they said.

I was broke and tired, but also sort of rejuvenated. All of the journaling I’d done during Colton’s season—and that was a lot—had me feeling like I was really starting to get to know myself better. And having all of that time to just think and really feel out what I wanted . . . well, I wanted to keep going, growing and understanding myself more.

Then the show started airing, and I swear that in front of the camera I looked like a crazy person. And I am a little crazy! I’ll admit it. That’s what makes me fun! But when I watched the fight between me and Caelynn on TV, it looked way uglier than it actually felt to me when it happened. At one point I growled, like some kind of a lioness or something, and I remember doing that in the context of just joking around about how angry I was. Things I thought were funny because they were a little bit outrageous, things I did just for fun, gave people all kinds ammunition to label me the Crazy Girl on TV.

Social media went nuts over it.

I don’t think anyone realized how bad the social-media hatred was gonna get. But it was bad. People were taking the time to DM me, calling me the C-word, and telling me I should die. There were four days straight where I just stayed in my pajamas hosting my own pity party. I’m embarrassed. I can’t get on my social media anymore. I’m afraid to go out. I can’t do anything.

That newfound confidence and slowly improving sense of self? Yeah, those took a hit.

But toward the end of the season, I started to grow on people. I became somebody people wanted to root for, and the comments on social media started to change for the better after my final exit. I didn’t think I wanted to be the Bachelorette, or that the public would want me to be the Bachelorette. But I think the fact that I’d gone through so much, and talked so openly about my feelings—treating my interviews like therapy sessions—made me super relatable to a lot of viewers.

I felt like a lot of young women were in similar places in life.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I’d learned from the experience. It was the first time I was forced in such a huge way to consider the big questions in life: Who am I? What do I want? What is love to me? How have I been hurt? What do I really want and need in a partner, beyond what I’ve put down on paper?

Considering those questions in an extreme situation where I had no phone, no TV, no real friends, no family, not even my own music to listen to—like Survivor for love, basically—I had two choices: I could hang out with the other girls and gossip, or I could take some time to look into myself.

I chose to spend a lot of that time looking into myself.

I wrote in my journal a lot that winter, which helped me come to the realization that being the next Bachelorette might actually be what God wanted from me. The more I prayed, the more it seemed clear that it might be a way to get the healing I needed. A way in which showing my imperfections could help others. And maybe, hopefully, a way for me to finally find love.