Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom

by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

Fear, manipulation, and isolation were all I knew of your kind of “love,” and the lingering question of why I was unable to be allowed the one thing that everyone else seemed to have—the ability of free will.

I was not consulted or compensated in any way for the series or other various shows, articles, or podcasts about my life.

I don’t know if any of you keep a diary. But if you do, and you’ve ever read back entries from a while ago, you’ll know that sometimes reading back your thoughts, especially from a younger age, can be cringey. But it’s that cringe that gets you to the good. I feel like if you recognize it as cringe, it’s a pretty strong indication you are healing or growing or both.

Taking accountability, not hiding excuses, this is what I did—why I did it didn’t matter.

I had learned that people out there—especially when they have nothing to lose—can screw with you just out of spite or jealousy or for their own self-interest.

As I took a look at my life during these years of incarceration, I realized that trust and its flip side—betrayal—were ever present in my family’s dynamic. My mother had been betrayed growing up, she had betrayed me as I grew up, and then I betrayed my mother in the ultimate way. Three generations of botched trust.

what’s really interesting is that my mother and Laura, and my stepmother, Kristy,2 all were nurse’s aides at the same hospital and actually all worked together.

I was a lie to myself. I was a healthy woman, not a sick girl. I had a father who loved me instead of the deadbeat one I thought I had. Nothing made sense, and I couldn’t figure out how to trust the truth or wipe away years of brainwashing about my father.

It was ironic because I had been to doctors all my life, but never to a gynecologist.

Even I, after really breaking down my daily existence with my mother, am quite stunned as to how integrated I had been in daily deception. The wheelchair is an obvious example, but my mother also taught me at a very young age how to shoplift.

So, yes, secrets and lies was my normal. Each secret and lie represented a huge facet of my life.

The life I’m creating now is not a façade. I know this because none of it is easy. Trust is hard work and I keep effing up, learning how to not project my fears onto those closest to me, and to continually prove that the Gypsy whose default was to recite a script, “My mom is my best friend,” disappeared from the green screen along with everything else when she flicked the light off.

Love is patient and kind, not submissive or controlling.

I don’t recall the Bible saying love is deviant and humiliating, but at the time, I mistook these behaviors as attention, and any attention at all made me feel seen and beautiful.

My mother might have learned Munchausen by proxy from her own mother, Emma. My grandmother died of a heart attack when I was six or seven, and my mom was devasted. My mother used to tell me stories of missing a lot of school because her mother said she was sick and would take her to go to doctors.

Without a broader range or exposure to how others lived their lives, I didn’t suspect that our daily schedule was odd or dysfunctional:

I didn’t know I had free will until I began to search the internet with an HP Notebook laptop that was gifted to me from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society one Christmas when I was real-age eighteen; the charity thought I was just thirteen.

Punishments ranged from the physical to the emotional to the supernatural. I remember a trip to the store when my mother marched in and handpicked the “right” raw cow’s tongue. She needed it for a recipe, but not the kind from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook, as my mother didn’t eat meat. She was cooking up a spell. Parents out there: if bribing your child with new baby dolls or Tiny Tykes starts losing effectiveness, you could always try telling your child that you are a powerful witch.

The spell my mother said she was conjuring with that cow’s tongue had two intentions: to cleanse my sinful soul, and to cast upon me a lifelong curse. Gypsy shall never find happiness; she shall never be free.

When I was probably about four and five and six, my mom homeschooled me using the books and curriculum of A.C.E. School of Tomorrow, a Christian curriculum. It was just ABCs and 123s. Basic. After a certain point, she stopped teaching me.

Doctors would ask her what school district was I in, and she’d just say “she’s homeschooled” and they never looked into it.

That seemed to be a theme, where I would have a friend and when they would get to a certain age my mom would cut me off from them.

I remember seeing pictures of Dylan and Mia and asking my mother, “How come they are getting bigger and changing and I’m not?” Time seemed to pass for others, but not for me. Other people seemed to grow up and change, and I was living a life where I would stay the same.

I just never felt I could get clean enough. Getting baptized was about renewal. I felt clean every time. Every time I felt like a bad person, I’d want to get baptized. Like little things made me feel bad.

Growing up with a mom who had schizophrenia, who saw shapes and shadows and heard voices, I felt like my mom had a judgment of me, when she would be listening to the voices in her head. She told me, “There are eight voices in my head and seven of them don’t like you.”

Faith is having a feeling that you are safe. And that what is making you safe has the power to see you through anything. It’s kind of like you are in the palm of God’s hand. You can go through a hurricane, you can go through a tornado—any kind of storm—but God has you in the palm of his hand and he won’t let anything happen to you. You are safe. That is faith to me.

I feel like I have been put through a lot of storms, and yet I am still not broken. I am not a broken person. I am worthy of being loved; I never had that self-worth before. I am not damaged; I am safe.

Yes, the Munchausen by proxy was the most dangerous part of the abuse, but it also acted as a backstage pass to my mother’s internal cinematic show.

I still have no frame of reference or context for what led the general viewing public to their hype, because I have never seen The Act. I was not consulted or compensated for a show that made actor Joey King a household name.

Here I was in my prison cell wearing my prison uniform, eating my disgusting prison food, while Hollywood celebrated itself. All I could think was, This girl tried to play me, and I had no control over it.

Being a people-pleaser requires you to submit a part of yourself to the person you aim to please. You give up your own needs and desires, and put the person’s interests in front of your own. In return you expect a payment in the form of validation and acceptance. This kind of currency is dangerous because the cost is you.

There’s a saying here, “Gay for the stay, straight from the gate,” so when in Rome . . . I did kiss a couple girls and became a pillow princess, four times.

I want to make my mother’s life mean something. I want to learn to live my life the way my mother didn’t know how to.