I'm Glad My Mom Died(65)

At least cha-cha-cha’s aren’t in style anymore. I’ll take what I can get. The singing ends and everyone stares at me, waiting for me to blow out the little flames on the little wax sticks.

This is it. This is why I didn’t want a cake and candles in the first place. I didn’t want to have to deal with my birthday wish. At twenty-two, this is the first birthday wish I’ll be making where I won’t know what to wish for because the thing I’ve been wishing for all my life is done. Over. Case closed. The thing that I secretly hoped through all these years I had some control over, I now know that I don’t, and never did.

My entire life’s purpose, keeping Mom alive and happy, was for nothing. All those years I spent focusing on her, all the time I spent orienting my every thought and action toward what I thought would please her most, were pointless. Because now she’s gone.

I tried desperately to understand and know my mother—what made her sad, what made her happy, and on and on and on—at the expense of ever really knowing myself. Without Mom around, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. I don’t know who I am. And I certainly don’t know what to wish for.

I lean forward and blow out the candles, wishless.

“You’ve gotta try the cake! The buttercream frosting!” Bethany shouts, already cutting the cake and divvying it up. She hands me the first slice.

I take a bite and make big “ooh, that’s good” eyes, hoping this satisfies Bethany. It seems to. She claps her hands repeatedly and jumps up and down. I head to the bathroom to throw it up.





67.


I HAVE HOPE. FOR THE first time in years, I have hope. I’ve been offered the lead role in a new Netflix series—NETFLIX <cue confetti>—and this is no two-hander, baby. This is all about me. Well, actually it’s an ensemble, but I’m the lead and, considering the network upgrade, I’ll take it.

Granted, “taking it” wasn’t the easiest of choices. I had expressed early concerns about the pilot script. The polite term for this in acting is to say, “I don’t respond to the material,” even if the exact language might be something more like, “I’m terrified this might be trash.” But my agents had urged me to do the project because the paycheck was pretty good, the only other projects I was being offered were cheesy sitcom roles and reality shows, and they said it’s worth it to make the connection with a respectable up-and-coming company like Netflix. This seemed like good logic to me, so I signed the contract.

It’s October 1st when I touch down in Toronto, the cleaner, friendlier New York City I’ll call home for the next three months of my life. I arrive at my hotel apartment excited, inspired even. I’m convinced that my life is turning around, that this new job is exactly the motivation I need to jump-start getting my life on track.

I’m starring in a real show. No more kids’ shows. Kid show stars can be messes with all their alcohol abuse and bulimia. But real deals—Netflix stars—aren’t messes. Real deals have their shit together.

So the day I get into Yorkville, the neighborhood in Toronto where I’m staying, I begin my real-deal endeavor with a trip to the bookstore to pick up a stack of self-help books. I plow through them in a week and come up with a solid affirmation-type mission statement of a plan, a mission statement that I think sums up the gist of all the self-help knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past week.

I will focus on myself. I write the phrase in my diary and touch it five times. (This is one of my OCD tics that lingers. I also twirl every time I enter my bathroom, but at least that one’s kinda fun.)

I know focusing on myself won’t be easy. It will take continuous effort, time, and attention. It will mean working on my issues, facing them head-on instead of letting them serve as distractions or trying to pretend they’re less than they are. It will mean doing THE WORK. The soul-scraping introspection it takes to understand where bad habits and insecurities and self-sabotaging patterns come from and why, plus the motivation to challenge and change those bad habits and insecurities and self-sabotaging patterns even as they continue to get triggered over and over again by various life events.

I am ready to clear everything and everyone out of my life if necessary. I am ready to focus solely on myself.

Until I meet Steven.



* * *



It’s the first day of shooting. I’m sitting in my trailer, thumbing through the scripts for episodes two through six when a terrible realization hits me.

I may be a part of Netflix’s first-ever dud. I don’t respond to these scripts even more than I didn’t respond to the pilot. The budget is lower than expected—not that there’s anything wrong with a low-budget project, it’s just that that’s not exactly the type of budget you want for a sprawling postapocalyptic drama about a small town where a virus breaks out and everyone over twenty-one starts dying. There hasn’t been a single Netflix rep present for any of the welcome-to-the-show cast and crew pre-parties, which makes no sense to me. There’s always a network rep present at those things.

I pick up the phone and dial my agents. One of them takes the call, and after I express my concerns, he explains to me that the reason no Netflix rep has been on set is because this show is a partnership between Netflix and a Canadian network called CityTV. CityTV is the production company, and Netflix is just the distributor.