Never Too Late

by Amber Portwood

  I’d always struggled with anxiety, and that shit didn’t help. It’s all on record how bad I was starting to feel at that time. The stress just starting eating everything up. He and I were both feeling the strain of things. We just didn’t know how to handle how fast and how much our lives had changed. All the messages from girls online were still building up in the background, and our relationship was getting really tense. Along with the cruel comments in the media, it just wasn’t a good situation.

  It came to a point, which people got to see on the show, by the way, where I ended up going to the doctor and getting a prescription for anxiety medication.

  That was where the next phase started. I hadn’t messed with pills since I found out I was pregnant with Leah. And for six months after she was born, I stayed sober. But I was already reaching the limit with my unhappiness and stress, and I was almost begging for something to come along and offer me a way to escape. A Klonopin prescription was the obvious step for somebody suffering that much anxiety. But almost right away, I started eating them all up, and that was the beginning of me becoming an addict.

  Before 16 & Pregnant had even wound down, they were talking about doing another season. Leah’s dad and I were completely sure we weren’t gonna get picked. We were still in the mindset that the show was a one-time thing, and we didn’t think we were exciting enough to get picked for the spin-off over anybody else who was on the original show.

  I’d just gotten that Klonopin prescription when one of the producers came by to see me and let me know we were going to be doing Teen Mom. When she walked in and said “You got picked!” I was so blissed out on my new pills I had to think kind of carefully about how to say “Yayyyy . . . woohoo!”

  I can’t tell you when people started to catch on to those pills being a problem to me. Nobody ever said anything. I don’t now if it was because they were afraid of the confrontation or what. At the time, I just thought I was really slick and really good at getting away with stuff.

  The thing about going back for another round of reality TV was that even with all the media backlash, we really were excited for the behind the scenes filming experience. We loved the people we were working with, and we got close to everybody right away. All those crew members and people I freaked out with my hillbilly impression in the beginning, we all ended up becoming really close. On their breaks we’d go out to eat together, just Leah’s dad and me and the whole crew at the Olive Garden sitting at a big ass table, eating and laughing and cracking up. That’s not really normal on the set of a reality show—when the crew is on break, they usually don’t want to see your face. But we were all so chill together we hung out all the time. After we were done filming, the girls would stay for an hour after everybody left just to hang out and talk and laugh about shit.

  That’s the reason why I have the relationships I have with the people from MTV. It’s all based on those moments. We built up a really strong dynamic. There was one time during Teen Mom when we were sitting and filming and my cousin Krystal was on her way over. When she came to the door, she was all mad as hell and telling me I needed to get my neighbors away from her. “The hell?” I thought, and went outside. To my surprise I saw my neighbor from straight across the street cussing and yelling at me. She’d started up with Krystal over where she parked, like the street had designated parking or something (it didn’t). But this woman obviously wanted trouble. It was seriously just some fifty-year-old lady freaking and calling me a whore, walking out into the road like she was about to do something. I don’t even know. Of course all I said back was “Shut your damn mouth up. I’m not messing with you. You’re like fifty.”

  Well, right at that moment, this huge blond girl started wandering up the street, and she was yelling and cussing at me, too! “That’s my mom! That’s my mom!” I was like, damn, is the whole freaking family here? Welcome to Anderson. So there I was standing on the porch in a black miniskirt with a camera crew, going back and forth with this mom and daughter tag team while they closed in on me, screaming I was a whore and acting like they were about to turn it up. They barged straight onto my property, on a rampage and the daughter started getting in my face. So, you know, I got right back in hers. I remember her trying to talk shit to me, saying, “You think you’re fucking cute, don’t you?” Well, obviously she was an idiot, because that’s a really dumb question to ask a smartass. I was like, “Yeah, I am.” Duh.

  But the crew all came out and they were telling me to walk away from that whole hot mess, so I went back up onto the porch and went inside.

  It’s a pretty obvious statement, but not everybody in reality TV has that much support from the crew. When everything’s all about the ratings and getting the craziest clips possible, it’s definitely not automatic that the people behind the wheel are going to have your best interest in mind all the time. And if you don’t respect those people you work with every day, if you treat them bad and don’t work on building a good relationship with them, you definitely can’t expect them to put their asses on the line to have your back when things get out of control. I was crazy back then. If somebody wanted to fight, I was always ready to fight back. It’s only because I was lucky enough to have such good people around me that I didn’t get into worse shit than I did. Nobody was egging me on or trying to get the most drama for their buck. I really felt they were concerned for me and tried to keep my interests in mind.

  It helps a lot to have that support behind the scenes when on the other side, everybody has decided you’re a piece of shit. The media was so awful at that time, and so was the public. It wasn’t just the mean stories on TMZ and E! News or whatever. There were horrible comments on those stories, and messages I was getting, and cruel things on Twitter . . . just all over the Internet. Let me tell you, Farrah and I might have our differences, but it sucks to see her taking on my old role. I know how that girl feels and then some. It’s not right. It’s really not. Once people decide to hate on somebody, they are relentless.

  It used to hurt me so bad when people said things. Back in the day when I got up to around 175 pounds, every time someone said something about my body it cut me straight to the bone. Anytime someone called me fat or ugly, I really believed it. I got so depressed over it, and then I started losing a lot of weight. It probably went a bit too far. I remember going shopping with Leah’s dad and trying on some jeans, because the ones I was wearing weren’t fitting right. The next thing I knew I was in the dressing room zipping up a pair of size zero pants. I remember him looking at me like, “What the hell?”

  I’d never been that skinny before in my life. It brought some of my confidence back, but there was still a whole lot of mess going on underneath that new look. Obviously fitting into a pair of size zeroes doesn’t mean a lot when your family’s a mess, you’ve got a kid at home, and you’re slowly jacking up your addiction to pills.

  Things weren’t right on Leah’s father’s end, either. It’s hard for me to look back and speak for what he was going through at the time. I know how the experience affected me, and I know the kind of feelings I had and how I started slipping out of control. But with him, it’s hard for me to say. The best I can explain it is that having all that money and all that attention from girls for the first time in his life just did something to change him. He went from being this beautiful person I’d started a life with to being a guy I didn’t recognize anymore. The way he talked to me and treated me was completely different. He was doing these mean little things, saying things to pick at me and start fights when there was no reason to be fighting. And the whole time he was getting all these messages from girls and he was sending them back.

  It was actually Valentine’s Day when things between me and Leah’s father took a turn for the worse. Sounds shitty, huh? Yeah. Just wait.

  He said he hadn’t had a chance to pick me up anything for Valentine’s Day, so he took off to go to the mall and get it together a little late. That was about an hour’s drive away, so I didn’t think much of it wh
en he didn’t come back right away. It took about four hours before I started really wondering, and I called him up to check in and see where he was.

  He answered the phone. But when we were talking, I heard the sound of girls laughing in the background. That put me on guard. I asked him what the hell was up.

  “I was at the mall,” he said. “These two girls recognized me and we got to talking, so I was giving them a ride home.”

  There was so much that was weird about that, to me, I couldn’t even think of what to say except, “Really?” I mean, really? The man left me alone at home on Valentine’s Day saying he was going to go get me something nice, and the next thing I know he’s off hanging out with other girls while I wonder where he is? Who would be okay with that? We started getting into a fight on the phone, and it was a really bad fight. But right then, when I was so upset, he started laughing at me. He was laughing at how mad I was, and that wasn’t even the worst thing.

  The girls were laughing at me, too. He’d put me on speaker. It was Valentine’s Day, he was hanging out with other girls, and he had me on speaker so they could laugh at how upset I was about it. I couldn’t believe it. After I hung up, I just sat there feeling so shocked and hurt that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  It was about eight at night when he got home, and the trouble continued. Instead of apologizing or talking about what had happened that day, he immediately picked a fight with me over what I was watching on TV. It was just a UFC match or something. I was into that kind of thing for a while back then, training in Krav Maga and all of that. But he walked in and picked a fight with me saying I was only watching UFC so I could check out the guys. He used that as an excuse to get all worked up, and then he left.

  I should have known what was going on. It’s almost textbook behavior for someone to throw those weird accusations around when in reality they’re the one off doing something they’re not supposed to do. The way he tried to shift the focus on me, like I was breaking the rules or doing something bad by watching a sport on TV that involved shirtless guys, should have told me he was up to no good. But I wasn’t prepared to see it coming. After he flipped out over me watching UFC, he said he was peacing out to go stay with his mom for a few days. But the truth came out fast. Before long, he called me up crying, or at least acting like he was crying, and saying he had something to tell me. You already know what it was, right?

  “I cheated on you.”

  Those weren’t girls he just picked up at the mall. He didn’t even go to the mall to get me a present for Valentine’s Day. He went to hang out with those girls because he was messing around with one of them. The whole time that day he was ignoring me, fighting with me, laughing at me, and insulting me, acting like I was doing something wrong, accusing me of checking out other guys on TV, leaving me alone on Valentine’s Day, he was doing it right beside the girl he cheated on me with. And he had her laughing at me.

  Nothing between us was ever the same after that. Something just snapped in me that Valentine’s Day. It was the straw that broke our back. I look back on that day as the day everything between us completely changed. I never in a million years thought that man would cheat on me. Yeah, things had gotten harder and we weren’t happy together like we used to be, but I still had in my mind that beautiful, sweet person who used to break into tears if he thought he’d hurt somebody. The man I knew and fell in love with couldn’t stand anybody being mean to somebody. He couldn’t stand the thought of hurting somebody. And here he was breaking my heart.

  It was hard to let go of what had been between us. Even as much as that incident hurt me and changed the way I could handle the relationship, our bond was still deep, and it was still strong. We’d shared so much together, and of course we still shared Leah. That closeness and that life and love we shared were always the reasons we never stayed broken up, no matter how bad we fought.

  But it was different this time. That betrayal just did something to me inside. The cracks had been forming for a long time, and they’d come from a lot of places. But finally they just got to be too much. My family was the only thing that ever held me back from the edge. But when that wall came up between me and Leah’s father, it was only a matter of time everything else started falling apart. It did not take long.

  Hanging with the family

  Back in the day with Bubby

  Bubby and Booboo

  Whatchu’ looking at?

  Landyn and Booboo hanging out

  Booboo in her early walking days

  Booboo’s first driving lesson

  Just bought a Booboo!

  Me and Booboo in front of the Christmas Tree

  Booboo did my hair!

  Just looking cute . . .

  Bubby on the bull

  So proud of my brother and all the troops fighting for us.

  Sad day watching my brother leave for Iraq. So thankful he’s back here with me now.

  This girl is so damn loved

  Mom and dad actually standing actually standing together . . . WHAT?

  Looking innocent with Krystal

  Just sitting there looking super happy . . .

  Seeing myself on the cover of In Touch

  7

  Behind the Scenes Destruction

  Yeah, I know most of you see where this is headed. If you’re reading this book, chances are you know enough about Teen Mom to know how one of the lowest points of my life turned into one of the show’s most shocking clips. You know, the one of me losing my temper and physically attacking the father of my child.

  I didn’t write this book to make excuses for my behavior. And I’m not denying anything we all know is true. I’m just telling a part of the story that people don’t know. So when I talk about what happened, I don’t want anybody doubting how much I regret the things I did to hurt people, or how sorry I am about it. I know I was messed up, my behavior was wrong, and there’s no excuse for abusing people in your life. And me, of all people, I should have known better. I did know better. I just messed up anyway. I’m not trying to justify it. It’s a horrible way to act and that person I was at the time is a person I’ve worked really hard not to be.

  But you can’t change the past, as much as you might like to. All you can do is try to look back with a clear mind, see where you went wrong, make amends where you can, and move forward. It’s never too late to do that, and I’ve tried hard to make it happen for myself and for the people around me. Even when it means facing how horrible the reality was when things were going wrong.

  Even before he cheated, we were in trouble as a couple. And I mean trouble. The fighting was bad. But still, the cheating was just the worst fucking thing. I was so hurt it just crushed me. I never in my life, ever, dreamed that he would ever cheat on me. Never in my life did I dream he would do that.

  The whole thing was kept under wraps. He actually filmed with this girl one time, and people who were watching didn’t realize he’d cheated on me with her. It was kept covered up for a long time. And the twisted thing was that I was part of that cover-up. He was the love of my life and the father of my daughter, and even with all the bullshit blowing up between us, I was still trying to fix our relationship. There was nothing simple or easy about the idea of breaking up with him for good, especially since we’d split up and reunited so many times already in our history. It wasn’t just the fact that we’d been together so long and had so much love and so many memories between us. The fact was that we shared a child. We were family. So even as things between us got worse and worse, we did still try to force the pieces back together. At least, I did. I can only speak for myself.

  So all through this time, there were things happening behind the scenes that I didn’t talk about, because I didn’t really want our business out there when I was trying as hard as I could not to give up on my family. Off camera we kept on talking and fighting it out, just looking for any possible way we could hold things together. We tried to work it out about a month after he told me he c
heated. He came over to my place one night to see me, and we just had a wonderful time with each other. I made dinner, and we talked and hung out for awhile, and then we put on a movie and fell asleep in each other’s arms. It was really nice. It was the kind of night that made me remember what we had in the beginning. It made me remember the love I thought we were still capable of sharing. As I fell asleep with him like that, I was feeling good about us and our chances of fixing what we had.

  I woke up around five in the morning and he was gone. The movie was turned off. I was in the dark, alone. And I heard these faint sounds like voices out in my living room. This was my house, let me mention. I paid for it. He wasn’t living there anymore.

  When I heard someone talking out there, I got up and sort of quietly went down the hallway to listen. And there he was, on the phone, talking to this girl.

  In my freaking house, he was sitting there talking to the girl he cheated on me with.

  I flipped on the light and I was like, “What the fuck are you doing?” And what he said to me was something like, “Quit it, Amber.” Like I was the one acting insane, and like he had no intention of hanging up that phone.

  I could not believe my ears. I asked him, “Are you fucking serious right now?”

  He held his hand up and said, “Stop it. You’re makin’ her feel bad.” He wouldn’t hang up. He was sitting there bitching at me for making this girl feel . . . what? I don’t know. I couldn’t believe it. And I was so shocked, I didn’t even get mad. I walked out into the living room and sat on the couch bawling my eyes out, begging him to hang up the phone. And he wouldn’t.