I'm Glad My Mom Died(64)

THE SHOW HAS BEEN OVER for three and a half weeks and the story the press has run with is that it ended because I was upset that my co-star was getting paid more than me, which is upsetting to me because it’s untrue. My manager told me it was cancelled because of a sexual harassment claim against one of our producers.

Whatever. They’ve got to blame someone, so they’ve chosen me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Except to tell the truth. Which I consider doing on multiple occasions but never bring myself to do because speaking out about the show and my time at Nickelodeon will just keep my connection to the show and Nickelodeon at the front of people’s minds. If anything, it will cement my position as “girl on Nickelodeon.” As “Sam.”

I hate being known as Sam. I absolutely hate it. I’ve tried to find some peace with it, but I haven’t. When people say, “You look like that girl from iCarly,” I just say, “Nope, not me.” Every single day, many times a day, people shout at me things like, “Sam!” “Fried chicken!” or “iCarly girl!” and then ask for a picture. I say no and walk away. Sometimes they’ll call after me and say that I’m rude. I keep walking.

I will, however, take a picture with anyone who knows my actual name because I genuinely appreciate the courtesy. But anyone else—nope.

I know I’ve grown bitter. I know I’ve grown resentful. But I don’t fucking care. I feel like that show robbed me of my youth, of a normal adolescence where I could experience life without every little thing I did being critiqued, discussed, or ridiculed.

I started to thoroughly dislike fame by the time I turned sixteen, but now at twenty-one, I despise it.

It doesn’t help that I’m famous for a thing I started when I was a kid. I think of what it would be like if everyone was famous for a thing they did when they were thirteen: their middle school band, their seventh-grade science project, their eighth-grade play. The middle school years are the years to stumble, fall, and tuck under the rug as soon as you’re done with them because you’ve already outgrown them by the time you’re fifteen.

But not for me. I’m cemented in people’s minds as the person I was when I was a kid. A person I feel like I’ve far outgrown. But the world won’t let me outgrow it. The world won’t let me be anyone else. The world only wants me to be Sam Puckett.

I’m aware enough to know how fucking annoying and whiney this all sounds. Millions of people dream of being famous, and here I am with fame and hating it. I somehow feel entitled to my hatred since I was not the one who dreamed of being famous. Mom was. Mom pushed this on me. I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality.





66.


I’M IN THE BACK SEAT of an Uber with Colton. I’m wearing a very little black dress and some too-high heels. I figure the higher the heel, the better the chance of it taking away some of my insecurity. So far, no such luck.

Bulimia kept weight off me for the first few months. But since those first few months, bulimia has betrayed me. My body seems like it’s retaining whatever food it possibly can. Refusing to get any smaller and, in fact, getting bigger.

I’ve put on ten pounds since those first few months of bulimia, when I was Mom’s goal weight for me. These ten pounds are the first thing I notice when I wake up in the morning, the last thing I notice when my head hits the pillow at night, and the thing that I most often notice throughout the course of any given day. I’m obsessed with these ten pounds. Tortured by them.

I don’t understand. Why won’t my body do what I want it to do? Why won’t bulimia help me out anymore? I thought we were friends. I thought bulimia had my back. Clearly it doesn’t. Clearly I had this whole relationship wrong. Yet I can’t seem to get out of it. I feel stuck to, enslaved by, codependent with my bulimia.

The driver pulls up to the bar and lets us out. Colton and I spill onto the street and rush into the bar, where some friends are already there nursing their drinks.

“Happy birthday!” they all shout at me simultaneously. One of them passes me a shot of tequila. I throw it back, then another. And another.

Within an hour, I’m wasted. Fifty or so friends have shown up by then, and we’re all having a decent enough time, when I’m frozen by the image of my friend Bethany walking toward me. She’s carrying a cake with candles.

Shit. Not cake with candles. Anything but cake with candles.

Bethany extends her free arm out and squeezes me into a tight one-armed hug. Even with just one arm, it kind of hurts. Bethany is a strong woman.

“You’re, like, not a good hugger,” she says in her trademark upswing, Valley girl lilt.

“Yeah, well…”

“I brought a cake. It’s vanilla, your favorite. And it has this, like, really cool vanilla buttercream topping that’s supposed to be, like, amazing.”

“Great,” I lie.

“I know, right? Wanna do cake now? Let’s do cake now.” “Hey!” she shouts to the crowd of people, snapping her fingers. Everyone starts singing.

I’m too drunk to be able to fully make out the blur of figures standing in front of me singing in a range of keys. Why is “Happy Birthday” the hardest song ON EARTH to sing, when it’s also the most popular song on earth? What kind of sick joke is this?