My Reality (14 page)

Huh, look at that. That felt pretty good.

Immediately after I hit Ignore, I got a text message.

Again from Tye.

“Where have you been? What are you doing?”

He must have known I was back when my phone didn’t go straight to voicemail.

I didn’t call him back or return the text message. I had come home a new person. I was confident. I had found myself again. I had felt what it was like to be loved again. I wasn’t sad anymore. I wasn’t heartbroken. And I was downright angry with Tye. And I didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

Scrolling through my text and voice messages, I saw that most of them were from Tye. And they dated back to the week I left for the show.

Pretty much every message I had waiting for me on my voice-mail was also from Tye. He sounded so sad and pathetic. But I
wasn’t moved. After the first few messages, I stopped listening to them and just hit Delete. I didn’t want to hear it. Not now. I felt so happy with how independent I had become, all that I had gone and done, and the new relationship that it had led me to find. And, looking back at Tye, I couldn’t believe that I had let that disaster of a relationship drag on for eighteen months.

Whenever I thought about the past, I got mad at Tye all over again for treating me as badly as he had for so long. I didn’t think he’d really changed. I figured he only wanted to talk to me now because he couldn’t. And if he thought he wanted me back, it was only because he couldn’t have me. I honestly didn’t have anything to say to him. I had said everything I needed to say before I left.

And things were different now. The experience of going away had given me exactly what I needed, which was to get away from him and get back onto my own two feet again, so I could finally look at the relationship without my heart goggles on. I saw what my friends had seen all along. It had never been a healthy relationship. Now that I could see that, and I was in a new, committed relationship—and even more important, a new mental state—I didn’t want to risk falling back into that unhealthy cycle again. And so I decided to avoid Tye.

The only person I wanted to hear from at that point, anyhow, was Jason. I was over the moon about our engagement. I had gone into
The Bachelor
expecting absolutely nothing, and now I had come home with everything I could have wanted. I was with this new great guy. I had a whole new life ahead of me. And I was excited to embark on everything that was waiting for me.

I had been away for two months, and I was happy to see everybody and share the little bit of my news that I could. My parents were aware that I was engaged, and my friends figured it out pretty quickly. I never said anything to them, but they knew
me well enough to be able to tell. For starters, I was obviously in a very different place emotionally. When I left for
The Bachelor
, I was so broken, and I didn’t want to talk to anybody. And when I came back, I felt on top of the world. And everyone could see that.

When I first got home to Dallas, Jason and I talked on the phone a couple of times a day and texted each other almost constantly. I was still giddy about our engagement, and I was always excited when his name came up on my phone.

Things changed very quickly, though. The conversations soon grew much shorter, and shallower. We didn’t seem to have a whole lot to talk about. And I found myself planning out things to tell him, like I had done in New Zealand. I had figured that once we were back in the real world, our relationship would just fall into place. But it just didn’t feel as natural as I had hoped. This made me nervous, but I was still willing to fight for us. I had made this commitment and accepted a proposal from Jason. I had to make it work.

Not only that, but Jason and I were both well aware of the reality of the show: Out of all of the seasons of both
The Bachelor
and
The Bachelorette
, only one couple had ever made it last. Jason and I had even laughed about the poor odds during our first days together, when we were sure we were going to be the second couple to survive. Now, I wasn’t so sure. But it would be so humiliating to become just another statistic and pop culture joke. And so I kept telling myself that things would get better. I made excuses for Jason: He was busy because he had a young son to take care of, and because he was about to start promotion for
The Bachelor.
I also resolved to try harder to create the good relationship I thought I had found.

Only, it wasn’t easy. Even when Jason and I did talk on the phone, it wasn’t just relaxed conversation between us while we got caught
up in the rush of getting to know each other. This should have been the time when we were on the phone from eight o’clock at night until midnight: We barely knew each other, we were in love, and we should have been so excited to find out everything about each other as fast as we possibly could. The questions should have been flying:

“What’s your favorite color?”

“What do you like to cook?”

“What trips do you want to take?”

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

But there was none of that. In fact, it seemed like Jason never had a lot to say about anything. Many times when we were on the phone, we really did sit there in awkward silence for what felt like minutes at a time. What I started to realize was that Jason and I had very different personalities. I’m very outgoing and bubbly. I’m a smart aleck. I tell jokes. But I didn’t feel like I could be myself, and when I did, I started to feel like I was doing more of the talking than he was.

One of my big things, which I had done with Tye, too, was to send jokes via text. Just little silly things to brighten his day. I started doing this for Jason. Only, Jason never really understood them. Not only that, but when I said something that I thought was clever and funny, it often wouldn’t really get the response from Jason that I was expecting. This left me at a total loss as to what I could possibly do to make things better. But I knew that if we were so confident in our love while we were newly engaged in New Zealand, we would definitely make it work back home.

Making things more difficult for me, Tye was still in the picture, and not because I was the one instigating anything, either. He was constantly calling and texting me. All of his messages went unanswered, but he was relentless. There had been a time when
this kind of attention and concern from Tye would have made me jump up and down with happiness. But not now. Not when I was engaged to someone else. Not when I’d had the chance to finally get some much-needed perspective on Tye. He would send texts:

“Where are you?”

“What are you doing?”

“Why are you ignoring me?”

“Why are you not picking up?”

In my head, I would respond,
Because I don’t want to talk to you right now.

Heck, he knew what it meant when someone ignored someone else. He invented that game! Had he forgotten that he was the one who taught me how to play?

In real life, though, I didn’t respond at all.

But I couldn’t just ignore him forever. This was Tye, after all. Given how crazy he used to make me, it’s hard to believe that I was as strong as I was for so long. I think my disinterest in talking to him shows just how deeply he hurt me. And I also think it’s a testament to how serious I was about my commitment to Jason and how determined I was to make our relationship work, if there was any hope for us at all.

I didn’t tell anyone—including Tye, of course—that I had won
The Bachelor
or that I was engaged to Jason. By not responding to Tye, I was trying to let him know that I had another priority in my life now, and that he couldn’t keep coming at me like he was. I didn’t know what to do. The last thing I wanted, after taking such a great step forward, was to make a huge mistake, take ten steps back, and end up right where I had been eight months before. And so, I literally spent several weeks analyzing everything that was happening in my life and what I should do about it.

After two or three weeks of Tye texting and calling me nonstop, I finally picked up his call one night. I don’t know what was different for me at that particular moment, but I think it had finally sunk in that he wasn’t giving up, and that maybe his persistence had earned him a chance to talk to me. I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom reading up on all the magazines that I’d missed while I was gone. I answered the phone confidently, but I was unsure about how the conversation would go.

I cleared my throat.

“Hello?” I said.

There was a slight pause from the other end of the phone. Maybe he was shocked that I actually picked up.

“Hey,” he said awkwardly.

I flipped the page of my magazine.

“Hey.”

We went through a bunch of small talk, and the inevitable “How are you?” and “What have you been up to?”

When I asked Tye how he’d been, he let it all out.

“Well, I’ve missed you,” he said. “I thought about you a lot, and thought about our relationship a lot.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” I muttered.

I was still flipping through my magazine as he continued.

“I, um, I’m sorry for how we left things,” he said. “I had a lot of time to think about things, and I owe you an apology.”

Well, yes you do! Sheesh.

I sighed and studied a picture in the magazine.

“Oh really? Why?” I asked.

I wanted to hear him say it. I needed to hear him say it.

“I just . . . I don’t think I gave us a fair shot,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

I felt the urge to say everything to him that I’d been hiding for the past year and a half. I had gone from being sad over Tye to being mad at Tye. I no longer feared telling him what I was really thinking, because I wasn’t scared of losing him anymore.
Heck, he wasn’t mine. I had moved on. I was happy. So what did I have to lose, right?

“You’re right. You didn’t give us a fair shot,” I said. “But if we were meant to be together, we would be together. It was just too hard of a relationship. It shouldn’t be that hard. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

Wow. That actually felt really good to say.

I had no idea I had become this confident. But I finally had the guts to say everything I had been afraid to say for so long, and I intended to be honest and tell him exactly where I was at in my life.

“You’re right,” he said. “If we were meant to be, we’d be together.”

Ouch.

Even though I had said the words first, I didn’t expect him to agree with me. Part of me wanted him to keep fighting for me. But a larger part of me was relieved that this cycle finally looked like it was over. We had both agreed that a relationship between us would never work. So I continued on with my final conclusion of that relationship.

“For the past year and a half, you took me for granted,” I said. “You didn’t appreciate me. You have no idea the things I did for you. My life revolved around you, and I got nothing back. You made it too hard for me.”

“You’re right,” he said quietly.

I didn’t know how to react to that.

Wait a minute, that’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re the bad guy. Be the bad guy!

After a short pause, he continued.

“I really missed you while you were gone,” he said. “I really care about you, and I want you to be happy.”

I heard the words, but I felt nothing. Even though it was exactly what I had longed to hear him say for so many months, it was too late now. I didn’t want to listen. So I tuned him out. The little bit that did get through to me just made me mad. At one point, he told me how hard the past couple of months had been for him, and it made me want to laugh and say, “What about how hard the past
year
has been for me?”

Not only was I angry enough to feel like it was well within my rights to be a borderline brat, but I had moved on. Of course, contractually, I wasn’t allowed to tell Tye that. Heck, I didn’t even want to tell him that. It was none of his business that I had moved on after we’d broken up. Isn’t that just to be expected?

We talked for a little longer. I continued to tell him everything that had bothered me both during and after our relationship. And he continued to listen and agree with me. It felt so good to be this confident with him and to speak so honestly. At the end of the conversation, I just sighed. This was it.

“Okay, well, I wish you well,” I said.

Maybe that’s not the nicest thing to say to someone you were so in love with, but how else do you really end an awkward conversation after that love has been stamped out?

“Let’s try and stay in touch, and I hope we can be friends some day,” I said. “Right now, I just don’t see that in our future, though.”

There was a long pause before he answered.

“Okay, take care,” he said. “And I really do hope you’re happy.”

“Good-bye, Tye.”

I hung up the phone and closed my magazine.

Did that really just happen? Did we just have the “good-bye” conversation?

“Good-bye, Tye” had been a phrase I had feared for so long. But it had flowed right out of me. I honestly thought that was the final contact between Tye and I. It was a strange feeling. You never forget someone you used to love so much. But sometimes, you have to accept you were not meant to be. And that’s exactly what we had just done.

E
ven if it was clear that things weren’t going that well with Jason as soon as I left the Bachelor Bubble, it was hard for me to let go of how good he had made me feel while I was in the world of the show with him. There had been a time when I had made Jason laugh, and he had thought I was beautiful. He had given me all of those little smiles, and winks, and kisses. He had chosen me out of twenty-five beautiful, accomplished women and put a ring on my finger, signaling his intention to spend the rest of his life with me. All of that attention had built up my confidence to where I could see myself as an intelligent, attractive, self-sufficient woman.