get defensive. I don’t understand it myself, and it seems that the more I wish I wasn’t a defensive person, the more frustrated I get with myself because I can’t help my reactions. I don’t like reacting either, but when I don’t, I feel like I’m lying to myself, like I’m simply suppressing the truth. If I do that, won’t it just come back to haunt me later?

I’ve always cared what people thought of me. I’ve never been comfortable with allowing someone to think something bad about me, to not like me for whatever reason. You ever see that episode of Golden Girls when Rose was obsessed with making this one woman like her because Rose has never had anyone dislike her in her life? Well, I have ALWAYS had people dislike me in my life, many quite passionately, but I’ve never learned to not care about that. It’s an incredible burden to fight the inevitable.

Now being on this show was supposed to be my cure. It’s like how therapists get rid of people’s phobias by overexposure to that which they are afraid (pouring spiders on someone with arachnophobia, shoving someone with claustrophobia in a tight box). Can’t remember the name of this procedure, but it’s supposed to help. I offered myself to MTV’s viewing public. The most judgmental, critical, and ruthless adolescents of all time are now free to judge my personality, my clothes, my thin hair, my love life, and my singing voice. Public ridicule. What was I thinking?

They asked me in my first interview, “How do you think this will benefit you?” You know what my response was? “I want to be a singer one day. I’m used to being in places where everyone thinks I have a beautiful voice. I need to prepare myself for the world. Not everyone is going to like me, and I think this will be the quickest, most brutal way to learn that lesson.” Um…YEAH, I learned the lesson, but does that make it easier to read websites filled with people who think I’m annoying, that I suck, that I have NO TALENT? Absolutely not.

So, after this giant and unnecessarily out of proportion experiment to rid myself of the burden of caring about other people’s opinions of me, I have not only been unsuccessful at my attempt for better mental health, I now have millions of people with an opinion of me, be those opinions positive or negative. I find this to be somewhat uncomfortable.

Are you ready for the clincher? With all this discomfort about being judged and being talked about, I have recently had Replacement Anxiety nightmares as the new cast for Real World wraps up and straps into their roller coaster that is gearing up to take off. I partially hate attention, and now I’m jealous about that attention being taken away. Makes me wonder if I’ll ever stop complaining at all. Part of me can’t even figure out what it is that I’m complaining about.
You know what I think it is? I guess I sort of thought that this thing would help focus me towards something, anything. I thought it might help me figure out my future if not supply one for me straight up. Thing is, not only am I still clueless as to what I want in this world, I feel like there are more expectations of me.

One thing that never swayed was my love for my voice. I know that people think I suck. I’ve never in my life before this show heard a single negative thing about my voice. Again, this could be due to the small ponds I’ve come from, but still, I’ve always been confident in my sound. I like it. I love it, to be honest. It makes me happy, and I think it’s beautiful. I’ve brought my friends and my family to tears with my voice, so I can honestly say for those out there who don’t like it and think I suck, well, I actually do not care. I have a gift that has brought happiness to me and to the ones I love. I don’t need anymore affirmation from anyone. I don’t know why I didn’t lose faith in that even after all this ridicule. I guess it’s the kind of faith that no one can take from me, and for that I feel so lucky.