I'm Glad My Mom Died(85)

“… your Netflix show got cancelled.”

Silence. It might be bad news in my agents’ minds, but it doesn’t sound bad to me. It sounds… fine.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” one of the voices asks, confused.

“Okay,” I repeat. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Okay,” another voice says, sounding relieved. “Well, all right then. Uh, yeah, so… good news is, we can start submitting you for other roles now since you’re not on hold for Netflix anymore.”

“Actually…”

A tense beat while they all wait to hear what’s coming next. I can almost feel their fears through the phone. Is she gonna cry? Please don’t let the actress cry. God help me.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, since we’ve been waiting to hear if the show got picked up for a third season. And I decided that if we got picked up, I’d do it. But if we didn’t, I’d take a break from acting.”

Silence.

“Oh,” a voice finally chimes in. “All right then, um… huh. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Like, for sure for sure?” one of them asks.

“Yes, double for sure.”

“All right. Well… let us know if you change your mind. We’d love to keep sending you out for roles.”

“I’ll let you know.”

A few awkward goodbyes are exchanged and then the call’s over. It’s as simple as that. An eighteen-year career ended in a two-minute phone call.

I feel at peace with the decision. Finally. I didn’t at first. It’s taken me over a year of mulling and back-and-forth with Jeff in order to get here. I’ve known for so long that my relationship with acting is a complicated one. Not dissimilar to my relationship with food and my body.

Both of them feel like constant pulling, yearning, begging, fighting. I’m trying desperately to get their approval, their affection, and I never quite seem to. I’m never quite good enough.

I’m resentful of the fight, and exhausted with it.

I’ve finally started to take some control of my relationship with food, and the healthier that relationship becomes, the more unhealthy a career in acting seems for me. I understand that many aspects of any job are out of the control of the person doing it, but in acting that’s especially the case.

As an actor, you can’t control which agents want to represent you, what roles your agent submits you for, which auditions you get, what callbacks you get, what roles you get, what the lines are for your role, how you look for your role, how the director directs your performance, how the editor edits your performance, whether the show gets picked up or the movie does well, whether critics like your performance, whether you get famous, how the media portrays you, and so on. God bless the souls who can tolerate that much up-in-the-airness in their lives, but I can’t anymore.

So much of my life has felt so out of my control for so long. And I’m done with that being my reality.

I want my life to be in my hands. Not an eating disorder’s or a casting director’s or an agent’s or my mom’s. Mine.





88.


“I LOVE IT,” I SAY, and I’m not lying the way I did when I turned six and opened my Rugrats pajamas. I really do love it.

I’ve had my backpack for three years and it’s gotten pretty beat-up-looking. I’ve complained about it for months but haven’t been able to find a decent replacement. But Miranda did. She found a beautiful black Tumi backpack with gold details. It’s perfect.

The only thing that beats Miranda’s presents are her cards. I pull hers out to read it. Her handwriting is meticulous. Her phrases are kind and simple. She always squeezes in a couple of well-placed jokes. And she always signs her cards to me as Alec Baldwin. I don’t even remember where this joke came from anymore but it still makes me laugh every time.

“Should we go into Disneyland first or should we get dinner?” Miranda asks.

It’s my twenty-sixth birthday. Even though Grandpa no longer works at Disney, because he worked there for fifteen years he gets an honorary lifetime supply of park sign-in passes and employee discounts. He used his discount to get me 40 percent off this courtyard-view room we’re staying at in the Grand Californian Hotel. Thanks, Grandpa.

“Let’s go into Disneyland.”

Of course I choose Disneyland. And not just because it’s Disneyland. If there’s ever the choice between dinner and another thing, I’ll choose the other thing.

I’m a few years into my eating disorder recovery but the road is still bumpy. Some weeks I don’t purge. Some weeks I do. The diagnostic criteria for bulimia stipulate that there must be a binging and purging sequence at least once a week for three months. So even though I exceed the weekly criteria sometimes, the purging is inconsistent enough that, according to Jeff, I’m no longer considered a bulimic. I’m just a “person who sometimes exhibits bulimic behavior.” Which still doesn’t sound great to me.

I’m glad at least that when I do have a slip, that slip no longer spirals into a slide. That’s huge progress, I know. But I keep telling Jeff that I don’t want to be a “person who sometimes exhibits bulimic behavior.” I want to be better. Sturdier. More confident in my recovery. I want to feel like I’ve outgrown eating disorders and they’re a thing of my past. But so far, that time hasn’t come.