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November 5 - November 5, 2025
When society is not equipped to hold an accurate mirror up to you, you end up interpreting your reflection according to available lenses, structures, and terminology. But they’re often wrong and misleading, or, worse, harmful. — JENARA NERENBERG, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You
“I need…” The sun dipped below the horizon, casting shadows over the pen. I spaced out as if exiting my body, drifting into emptiness. From far away, I finally heard one word. “… help.”
“On the rocks, no salt,” I replied, knowing her order. “Pour one for yourself, Nancy!” Mom egged. We knew the waitstaff by name. Anyone sitting nearby was brought into the fold, but no one was allowed to inhibit Mom’s good time. Once the rim touched her lips, her priorities shifted, and the drink had her undivided attention for the rest of the evening.
Was John mean to Mom because of me? I pulled the covers over me to create my dark cocoon and hummed my favorite Aristocats song, “Ev’rybody Wants to be a Cat,” until I fell asleep. The next morning, everybody acted like nothing happened. Mom was making us PB&B (peanut butter and butter) sandwiches for the road to Dad’s. John was sitting in the La-Z-Boy drinking Yoo-hoo and eating Hostess Sno Balls. Did they forget? Am I the only one who remembered? Did I make it up?
The next days when everyone acted fine SUCKED
The custody battle raged on (and would last more than a decade), devolving into character assassinations and claims of abuse and neglect.
Jaimee got the block three-quarters of the way out when the tower leaned too far and crashed. “No, no, no!” she cried out, fiercely upset about losing. Thankfully, Dad knew all the tricks to calm us whenever we were hurting. We shook hands in good sportsmanship, did the dishes in an assembly line, and carried laundry upstairs before the lights were out. At Dad’s, I never had to sing myself to sleep. The sound of the evening train was my lullaby, and it was always right on time.
At seven years old, it didn’t register that I was being groomed to be sold. I was no longer a child; I was a commodity.
To be encouraged to show up authentically, only to be deemed unfit to be seen, confirmed my true self was not enough. Not in this town.
My strategy for success was foolproof. All I have to do is be perfect at everything and look perfect while doing it.
“Hey, do you know who Ms. Elliott is?” Mom called up to me from the office. “Naur!” I responded in an Australian accent, busy practicing my next dialect.
This is sp funny
His role in my life was steadily fading. Mom hinted that his infrequent calls weren’t just about being busy. The deeper truth—that he simply didn’t care enough to stay in my life—was quickly overshadowed by my hyperactive schedule. The aftershocks of his absence wouldn’t begin to ripple for years.
I’d just turned nine, but childhood was over.
Unintentionally, Mike’s Super Short Show squeezed out the final drops of childhood wonder I had left. Acting wasn’t an art, it was a business. Time wasn’t free, it was money. And the fire hose of positive reinforcement came from adults praising me for behaving like one of them.
My self-esteem was built around my ability to operate like a grown-up, or, more accurately, a fail-proof robot.
The catch was, we didn’t know what doors we had opened until we were already inside.
The more people who expressed their pride and admiration, the more proof I collected that I wasn’t a mistake.
My storyline followed a celebrity child actor-dancer, Ally Parker (named after me), who longed to be a regular kid. Upon returning to public school, she’d learn to navigate a double life as a normal kid by day and television star by night. I was literally made for this!
The OG Hannah Montana?
Cami called to review the details over the phone. “Logline: a young girl goes to a musical summer camp with dreams of being a star…” Her voice trailed off as her attention caught up with her. Did I hear that correctly? “Is … this the same project I pitched?” I asked skeptically. We’d been given no sign that it was moving forward, but the plot was uncannily similar. Cami huffed in exasperation. “I think they took the idea and then put their own writers on it.” She skimmed the message again. “But the same producer is listed.” “So I’m still attached as the lead?” I double-checked, hope rising.
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What I couldn’t see was how my fixation on spiritual perfection and superlative health ignored all the unpleasant thoughts and feelings swirling in my mind and heart. By obsessing over what I could control—what I ate, how I moved my body, and when I prayed—I temporarily escaped all strife regarding the past, present, and future. Everything is going as planned.
What I miscalculated about leaping past mistakes to enlightenment was that disowning messy parts of myself didn’t mean they didn’t exist, nor had I “fixed” them. Avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and volatile feelings did not make them, or the deeper wounds accompanying them, disappear. They were just banished out of my direct awareness, lying dormant in the shadows. And I had a life’s worth of them festering.
“Do you have anything, er, coming-of-age?” he asked tactfully. “Like, expressing yourself through fashion or makeup?” “Oh, yes.” I thumbed through the stack. “This one’s called ‘Magic’ and it’s about beauty standards.” “Born and bred in a machine / Lay me down across the table / Trim the fat and wipe me clean / The magic wand is a metal scalpel…”
“Yep! This is ‘Tornado,’ inspired by how it felt to be in my house at night.” “Dark funnels fast approaching, tormenting left and right / Slowly suffocating homes to the eye’s delight…”
Without realizing it, I’d written songs that were cries for help. I’d started writing music the year we moved to Los Angeles, the year life flipped upside down. Now, I was silencing myself for good. There was no room for the vulnerable child, the messy and experimental teen, the sinful or ordinary human. There was no time for sad memories, overwhelming stress, or spiritual temptation. I needed to perform whatever role I was given and please whomever was in front of me without interference. There was only one way to push through the relentless work schedule and family dysfunction, the public
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Shortly after, my team vetted a request from an international organization dedicated to fulfilling end-of-life wishes for terminally ill children. I hopped on a virtual call and met Emily, a superfan of Camp Rock. Mom corresponded with their reps, who asked for travel information to book a flight for an in-person visit. After claiming I needed to travel alone, my mom’s intuition sounded an alarm. Though my team approved the request, my mom did her own due diligence and discovered the website was a scam, the young girl was a plant, and I was walking into a kidnapping plot to be held hostage for
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WTF
If you die and your diary is leaked, you need to be perfect, even in privacy.
Inwardly, damage accumulated across nearly every system in my body. I stopped processing meat and other dense foods. My gut motility slowed, leading to constipation and cramps. A layer of fine hair called lanugo formed all over my body as a survival mechanism for self-insulation. Overusing my muscles without proper recovery led to injuries in my right arm and lower back. I never intended to hurt myself, and I wished I could stop.
“I think I need professional help. The timing would work perfectly. Demi’s team is pushing a recovery campaign. I can go covertly with no press coverage and come back stronger for my final pilot season before I turn eighteen.” “You can’t take off that much time, you’ll lose momentum,” they answered flatly. “I know, but—” “Alyson, you’re not that anorexic. You’ll throw away your career if you take a break right now. You’re one role away from everything changing.” At the time, my ears interpreted their words as caregiving. They believe in me and I can’t let them down. I didn’t see their greed
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That was an incredibly watered-down version of: “When you stop using your eating disorder to avoid all your psychological and emotional needs—when it’s no longer your identity, and you decide to feel your feelings, including all the trauma stored in your body from your childhood, and the fear of losing your career in a weight-obsessed industry kicks in—you’re going to absolutely freak out and either cling to your disorder harder or consider ending your life, because you won’t be able to see another way forward.” I wasn’t ready—for any of it.
There was an art form to affirming her needs without her feeling belittled. “I feel like you’re changing, and now I have to reinvent myself. This will be such a hard journey to become a new person. I have fifty-eight years to undo,” she wallowed. As the weeks went on, her desolation amplified. “I shouldn’t have opened your letter to Debby. You never told me it was hard to share emotions with me. If I’m such a horrible parent, just go live with your father!”
And he didn’t know his fearless and spunky daughter was a broken shell of a human; the Sudoku-loving, Ivy League–dreaming kid had gone numb.
didn’t mean to be a failure, Dad. I was working so hard to make you proud. Mom, I can’t fake being perfect anymore. I’m sorry for being the worst mistake.
I was still waiting for the switch to flip on. I blamed my childhood trauma and workaholism, and figured one day, when I was healed and less selfish, I’d desire to bear children and settle down.
“What’s the emotion that feels like flutters in your stomach plus caffeine and being really absorbed by every detail of a person?” I asked Kate during therapy. “Like, romantic attraction?” “No, this was a woman,” I explained. “I’m thinking maybe I was admiring her and it was like meeting an idol or something. Anyways. Strange what the body does sometimes.”
This shit is so funny
Meanwhile, I fervently translated doctrines with Christian scholars, then cross-referenced white papers on biology, genetics, and trauma research. I was surprised to find that most secular perspectives, and even several sects of Christianity, concluded that being gay was a natural and healthy point of diversity in humanity. While I was nauseated from so much dissonance and my skepticism remained high, I couldn’t stop until I found clarity.
“Alyson,” came a gravelly voice with a Midwestern accent via Skype, “in order to understand scripture, we have to recognize that what we think is true has been saturated in layers of culture, generational bias, historical movements, institutional dogma, power systems, flawed translations, and the state of our own consciousness. Even those with direct spiritual revelation aren’t immune to slanted interpretations. If you’re curious, I have texts you can read.” “Please,” I said keenly. “We’ll start with the scriptures most referenced to condemn homosexuality. Then we have to unpack the ‘-isms’:
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“I promise I never meant to be evil, God,” I sobbed into my pillow. “But I don’t want to live a lie anymore. If by being honest I’m banished to hell … if by experiencing real love with someone, that means I’m evil, then I might have to accept that. I only ever wanted to please you and do the right thing.”
I wept, frightful of abandonment. “But I’m not strong enough to stick to a belief that leads me to think I might as well kill myself.” I laid out my ultimatum: “Either your love is bigger than this and you see my heart, or you’re not a God I’m capable of serving. Call me a disgrace; tell me you never knew me. I’m so sorry. But I give up.”
By these calculations, you should still have over a million dollars.” A million. Instead, my account was at zero.
Fuck literally everyone involved
Why did I do any of this in Hollywood? If I had known I would be rebuilding my account from scratch in my twenties, I could have lived a normal life without all of this baggage. I could have stayed in Ohio. I could’ve played sports with friends. I just wanted to go to school like a normal kid. Everyone told me over and over I was one step away from making it, that I was meant for this. But it was only to keep me going so they could get paid or elevate their own status. I was never a human to them. I was a dollar sign and a trophy. No one has ever had a fucking clue about what’s actually
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As he spoke, I felt a congruence in my chest, as if my body remembered a similar version of events. But his narrative differed greatly from my mother’s, and I’d built my whole life upon hers.
I needed her to be good. If I admitted she wasn’t perfect, then it would spiral; I would have to face the guttural blow of betrayal, which would trigger deep regret for being so compliant and never paying attention
Who the hell am I? Was any of it genuine? The story of my life was being rewritten right in front of me, and it all felt like a work of fiction.
With my hands on my chest, I felt the full weight of sorrow. As I accepted the losses, it freed me to finally look ahead. Instead of trying to make the grief shrink and disappear, I embraced it as a part of my story, focusing on who I could become amid the heartbreak, not without it.
“I still find it easier to take full responsibility for things instead of allowing others to be held accountable, because if I can blame myself, then I feel a false sense of control that I can solve the problem. As a kid, I did whatever felt safest, even if it meant taking on the weight of the world.”
guess … I’m also feeling some perfectionism around healing, because I have an assumption that if I had ‘completed’ my healing, it would’ve prevented this painful event and could make me immune to future tragedy. I’m … I’m just exhausted.” I sat with it for another moment. Tears formed in my eyes, and I felt like my three-year-old self seeing my parents fighting in the house before their divorce. “I just want to be okay … it’s hard that you can’t really get that guarantee.”
The only person left to message was Mom. I opened our thread, which had been inactive for a few months. As I pasted the photo, unease tightened my chest, my body admitting that this decision was mostly out of obligation and not sincerity.
