My Reality

by Melissa Rycroft

  Emotionally, I was in a really good place. I had gone through several highs and lows throughout the process, but I had finally reached some stability. I thought I had found the guy. I thought I was in love. I thought I was happy. I mean really, genuinely happy. Marriage was a very big deal for me, and I was sure it was about to happen in my life. Maybe I had taken an unconventional path, but it was the one I had found, and I knew that I was totally where I was meant to be. And the concept of marriage was becoming a very real possibility very quickly. I mean, that was the point of this whole process, right? And the end was not too far off.

  My thoughts began to venture off into what my life would be like. Keep in mind, I had not been in my “real life reality” in quite some time. I had been living in my world with Jason of lavish dates and exotic vacations. And when I imagined our future together in this world in my mind, everything would work out perfectly.

  My dates with Jason were coming to an end. I only had a handful of them left before the whole experience was going to be over. But I didn’t feel any pressure, just confidence. Oddly enough though, I always made sure I had conversation topics in my head before we’d have a date together. Just in case the conversation reached a lull I wanted to be the one to have a funny story to bring us back on track. It didn’t strike me as odd that I would go on our dates with a checklist of things to talk about, just to keep the conversation going. I knew my time with him was limited, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t filled with awkward silence. (Should have been a red flag . . . but I think we’ve established that I’m not very good at picking up signs.)

  Our conversations seemed to flow so easily because I had no problem telling Jason how happy he made me, and how I hadn’t felt this way in a long time. Never mind that ordinarily I wasn’t the kind of girl who said stuff like that. Or that it had taken me over a year to say anything like that to Tye. Things happened fast in the Bachelor Bubble, and while I was living that reality, all of this emotion just kind of came out of me. So much of our conversations were me spilling my heart and my feelings out all over Jason.

  I distinctly remember the night that I said those “three little words” that we’re always warned about saying. I didn’t just throw that word around either. And the last time I said it, I got a blank stare as a response. But that night, I just felt like I had to say it. I really felt like I was in love—I was in a place I’d never been before—and I wanted him to know!

  I remember we were sitting on a couch in New Zealand, and it just came out. “I’m falling in love with you.”

  Now, I knew he couldn’t say it back, even if he felt it, but it was still hard to say those words to someone and not hear anything back. Especially, since this would be the second time I’d said that to someone, just to have him not say it back. But at least this time, I could convince myself that Jason really wanted to say it back, he just couldn’t. It’s no secret the Bachelors can’t reveal their true feelings until that very final moment. So I would just have to wait until then to see if he felt the same.

  But his reaction was to hug me tight and kiss me. I believe that’s a good sign.

  That was a huge moment for me. I had not only admitted to myself, but also admitted to Jason just how deep my feelings were. And there was no turning back after those words are said! You can’t retract them. But I was glad I had said it, and I had gotten a good reaction to them. Now, he knew exactly where I was emotionally, and didn’t have to wonder if I was really in this.

  By this time, there were only two of us left, me and Molly. I had really forgotten that it was still a competition at this point. I felt like Jason was my boyfriend, and I was his girlfriend. But I was not so naïve to block out the obvious. Deep down, I knew what was at stake. And whenever I thought about possibly losing this new love that I’d found, I got a huge pit in my stomach. So I forced myself to just think about the positive.

  After meeting Jason’s family, I was even more convinced we were supposed to be together. They were so warm and inviting, and they genuinely seemed interested in trying to get to know me. And to me, this was the last real hurdle to making our romance official. It was the final step in this process.

  This was it: the last official time we would get to be together before Jason had to make the decision to be with me, or not. No pressure or anything, right?

  I remember the last time Jason left me before the final Rose Ceremony. We had just had our final date, and I wouldn’t see him again until he was either proposing to me, or rejecting me. I didn’t want him to leave. As confident as I pretended to be, I was terrified about the possibility of losing this new love. The next time we talked, he could very well be saying good-bye to me forever.

  Things that made sense to me in my Bubble don’t make sense to me anymore. There were huge issues that I just ignored and didn’t think about. How could I become engaged to someone who had been dating multiple women the entire time? Could he really, truly love me if he was dating someone else? And why was I okay with the fact that he had all the control? I had found someone I loved, and that I wanted to be with . . . but the decision to be together wasn’t up to me. I had no control over whether or not we’d be together.

  And these thoughts brought Tye right back into my mind. Not because I missed him or was wondering what he was doing, but because my current situation suddenly began to mirror my old one. I was in love and out of control of the situation . . . again.

  The day was finally here, the day for which I’d waited two months, and which would decide my future forever. My mind went back and forth the entire time I was getting ready. I felt confident that I was about to receive a proposal.

  Surely, he’s going to pick me. How could he not, after the connection that he and I have made? What about all of the little signs he gave me that showed how much he cared? This is it. It has to be!

  Then it wouldn’t be long before my mind went in the other direction.

  But what if he doesn’t pick me? I mean, I’m sure Molly is feeling just as confident as I am right now. What if I’m the girl he sends home? What if he does care about me, but he cares about her more? I didn’t even think about that.

  Let the mind games continue. You can see why I was so emotionally drained after going through an experience like this. And reliving it makes me just as dizzy!

  •

  On the limo ride over to the proposal destination, my heart began to pound. It sounded like a drum line was performing right next to me. I mean, I had thought about the possibility of being rejected, but I hadn’t thought about it . . . and now I was . . . and now was not the time!

  Wait! I’m not ready yet! I need to get my emotions in check!

  I had no idea whether I was the first girl, or the second, or if anything had happened yet, or what was going to happen when I did finally get to Jason. I was trying to catch my breath, but I was too nervous. I was trying to smile, but my lips were quivering at the edges of my mouth. My hands were sweaty. I was concentrating on trying not to trip or let my fear and longing show on my face.

  Should I look at him? Should I avoid eye contact?

  I had been so confident up until now, but I suddenly felt very awkward, maybe because it had sunk in that it was a real possibility that he might reject me. I didn’t want to make eye contact with him and possibly read his expression before I got to him.

  When I finally reached Jason, he smiled at me, grabbed my hands and gave me a small kiss. I took a deep breath.

  Here we go.

  We stood there for a moment, just looking at each other. His face was impossible to read.

  Was he happy? Was he nervous that he was about to reject me?

  He smiled slightly.

  “Our very first date, I started falling for you,” he said. “From the blimp ride, to meeting your friends, seeing you with Ty, seeing you with my family, seeing it all.”

  Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Unless there’s a big but coming soon, this is really good!

  Jason started smiling a litt
le bigger, and I slowly started to smile back. He grabbed my hands tighter.

  “I came into this looking for someone exactly like you,” he said. “Exactly like you. I said to myself early that throughout all this, I don’t know if I could ever say good-bye to you.”

  I was looking at him now, and I knew this was it! He was picking me!

  My heart suddenly started to fill up, and I couldn’t keep the biggest smile from taking over my whole face. I wanted to fall into his arms at that very moment.

  “You make me happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time now: I’m completely in love with you!”

  I shrieked. It was a noise that I didn’t even know I could make! I immediately started jumping up and down and hugging him—I was so unbelievably happy! I had found what I was looking for. I loved him, and he loved me! I was loveable again, and it felt so good!

  And then, Jason got down on his knee and proposed to me.

  Unreal! This was the moment that I had been waiting for my entire life.

  Of course I accepted. I was in a cloud of total happiness. I had made it to the end. I had won. I had gotten my man. I had found true love! We were going to be a family! I was so content that I had found the right place for me.

  Jason really did fill all of the holes where things had been missing in my previous relationship with Tye. I hadn’t had any of that good romantic attention since the early days of my relationship with Josh, and that had been when I was a teenager. It felt as good to receive such attention as I had imagined it would feel during the many long nights I had been alone before The Bachelor.

  And just like that . . . it was all over. I was in love, I was engaged, and I was going back home to my real world. I was confident our relationship would work—even though I didn’t really think of how it would work . . . I just assumed it would. We were happy, in love, and getting married. It just had to work out.

  The Bachelor Bubble still had a powerful hold on me, and when we left New Zealand to go home, I was still giddy. I was so happy that I had found this man who I loved, who loved me too, and now we were going to get married and start a life together. The only downside was that I couldn’t celebrate with anyone, since the world didn’t know yet. But that was all right. I figured it would give Jason and me more time to get to know each other before our good news became public.

  Jason and I said our good-byes in New Zealand, and I headed back home. It took a little adjusting to get back to normal again. I hadn’t been home in a long time, and I hadn’t talked to anyone in weeks, so I was anxious to see what I had missed. First things first, I turned my phone on to get all my missed emails and messages.

  I turned on my phone while waiting in line at security, and it blew up! Honestly, it was a little overwhelming.

  Before I had left for The Bachelor, my first thought would have been to immediately check to see if Tye had left me a message. But I had finally accepted that he had never cared about me in the same way that I had cared about him. I was happy to now be giving my love to someone who wanted it and had love to give me in return. I knew that Tye hadn’t called me while I was gone, and at that point, I didn’t really even care.

  Literally one minute after I turned my phone back on (the messages were actually still downloading), it rang. I looked down at the screen.

  It was Tye.

  My heart stopped for a minute. I was surprised that he was calling me, but more than that, I was struck by how much I had changed. For the first time, ever, I honestly didn’t want to talk to him; not after everything he’d put me through.

  I hit Ignore.

  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: