Bulletproof (12 page)

I was never the type of girl to dream about my wedding day. Actually, the thought of planning a wedding has always seemed like the most stressful thing to me. I never had a vision of it, I guess. Although I knew I wanted to be married one day, it was never a number one priority type of thing. Of course at that point I’d already been engaged. Back when Ryan and I found out we were pregnant, we’d both felt a lot of pressure to get married. He proposed to me on my seventeenth birthday, just before Bentley was born, and my mom and I did make a few moves toward planning a wedding. But it never felt like a natural thing to do. I loved Ryan at the time and wanted us to be a family, but the engagement always felt vaguely forced. It had seemed like the right step to take, until it very obviously wasn’t.

When I got together with Kyle, I never had any thoughts along the lines of “Okay, I’m entering this relationship because I’m gonna marry him.” It wasn’t a top goal and the concept didn’t play a big part in us being a couple. But once he moved down to Chattanooga with me and we’d been there for awhile, it started to seem like a natural thing to think about. I was very content with Kyle. We had such a long history, and the way it had unfolded meant a lot to me. We had been so close to each other when I veered off, got pregnant, and gotten engaged to Ryan. And then, after such an extreme interruption, we’d gotten back together. It felt like since we’d made it through all of that, we were probably meant to be together. I also had a dream of putting a family together before Bentley was old enough to realize that he didn’t have a set of married parents. And if I thought of it that way, I couldn’t help but hear a clock ticking.

At the time, I felt Kyle wanted to marry me too. He was an old-fashioned type, and he seemed to have the same understanding that we were meant to be together. But as time went on, it became obvious that he had very serious commitment issues as far as marriage was concerned. Not everyone grew up with the kind of relationship model that I had with my parents. His had split up when he and his brother were teenagers. I can’t speak to what kind of relationship they had, but it didn’t seem to have made a good impression on him. Like a lot of people in those shoes, he was scared. Maybe he was afraid that he was going to turn out like his parents did, or that he wasn’t capable of succeeding as a parent or husband. Everyone has their own kind of baggage when it comes to that stuff.

As time went on, I clearly became more ready and willing whereas he definitely did not. I’m not the pushy type, so I didn’t say much on the subject. I thought the longer we were together, the more he’d realize that was the next step. We had a solid relationship, and our life seemed settled. He was always absolutely wonderful with Bentley, and was a great father figure for him. It seemed possible that once we’d continued to make it work for a while and he came to accept that he was already a good partner and a good dad, he’d gain more confidence and stop being so afraid of fulfilling his fears by ending up in an unhappy marriage. And so the waiting game began.

Meanwhile, my life had started to feel like it was on track. I was moving ahead in school, and started to dabble in subjects that I thought I might actually enjoy turning into a career. Along with my business classes, I started taking creative writing. The writing classes were a joy, but I didn’t see myself making a real living writing stories, so I started looking into the journalism side of writing. Being a writer or a journalist was the second thing I imagined for myself after I’d wanted to be a chef. But after moving from creative writing to news and non-fiction, I realized it wasn’t for me. Writing had always been a pleasure for me, and I hated feeling like I was forcing it. I only wanted to write what I wanted to write, and at my own pace. I knew it would be a completely different activity if I was always on deadline. And writing for anyone but myself is hard! This book is a perfect example. When I write, I want it to be as authentic as it can be and as close as possible to what I’m really thinking and feeling. But feelings can be hard to put into words, even when they’re your own. Especially when they’re your own. And no matter what I was writing, I’ve always been so picky about word choice and things like that that it could easily turn into a big ordeal. In the end, it was obvious that was not the career for me.

Finally I shifted to media technology and found my place. After being on MTV and doing the many media appearances and public speaking engagements that came along with it, I realized I could pursue what I liked about writing in other ways by communicating on camera, on the radio or in social media. Radio, in particular, became very interesting. Having been on screen for so long, I had a little camera fatigue. Like, “Why would I want to keep my face on TV?” Radio also interested me because it involves the challenge of having to entertain and hold attention without anyone seeing your expression or your gestures.

My first radio show was for an internship at a local station. It was a weekly program called
Ask Maci
. People would call in and ask questions about any and everything from parenting, being a young adult, or what Justin Bieber was doing that week. I really enjoyed it. When it was over, I found another weekly talk radio show called
Live and Local
led by a local radio host named Brian Joyce. He covers everything from politics to entertainment, and we started a segment called “Defend Your Generation.” In the segment he brings up things like pop music, smart phones, and all of the dumb shit my generation gets a reputation for. When I started appearing on the show, I wasn’t very good at defending anything. We always laughed about the fact that I wasn’t really sticking up for my own. But most of the stuff people found ridiculous, I found ridiculous, too. Sorry!

At home, Bentley was a typical toddler. I loved watching his little personality coming out. His first obsession was Thomas the Train. I swear I watched every one of those episodes and movies about ten times. When he could barely even talk, he learned the theme song by heart and he could name every single train just by looking at their faces. I thought that was crazy, because there were so many of them! He was always into dirt bikes and monster truck toys, even back when he was supposed to be playing with the baby toys like simple blocks or big plastic fake keychains. He was making engine noises before he could make words.

We almost skipped the Terrible Twos. Except for that pacifier. It was his biggest obsession by far. The few times I tried to take it away, he freaked out so bad I thought I’d lose my mind. Over time I tried to wean him off of it, but it was a little bit difficult, because every time he went over to Ryan’s house it was back to square one. It got to the point where I brought it up with a pediatrician. She told me not to worry about it and to wait until he was old enough to reason with.

Pacifiers are a blessing and a curse in that way. That paci saved my sanity plenty of times before it made me lose my mind. When he was three years old, we finally got him to let it go. Kyle’s older brother was expecting a baby, a little boy, and so Kyle and I told Bentley he had to give all his pacifiers to the new baby because he really needed them. Bentley was not happy about that at all, but he managed to step up and do the noble thing.

Age three was worse than two by far. That was when Bentley finally got into his first kind of rebellious stage. His personality was coming out and he was learning what he liked and what he wanted. And, of course, he learned I wasn’t the only one who could use the word “no.” Once he figured it out for himself, he said it all the time. Bentley just wanted to do what he wanted, when he wanted. So, that was fun.

That period was a challenge for Kyle, too. For both of us. Sharing parenting duties is tricky. Kyle was amazing with Bentley, but when it came time for discipline, he tended to take a quiet step back. In every other way he was a natural as a father figure, but in that regard, he never felt it was his place. That bothered me. Ninety percent of the time, he was involved in Bentley’s life, and when he was around Bentley he completely took on the responsibilities of acting as a dad. To me, that meant he had earned the right to make Bentley behave and treat him with respect. It was important to me to have that enforced, and I didn’t like having to handle all the discipline on my own. When I was growing up, my mom would definitely keep us in check and make us behave, but she was the more lenient parent. When I was younger, I might talk back to my mom but I would never talk back to my dad. But it was a kind of balance they had. It was kind of like my mom was the diplomat and my dad was the hardass. So it was difficult for me to fill both roles, and it was especially difficult because I didn’t expect to take the hardass role at all!

***

When we first got together, Kyle had stopped racing and he was working for a company in Nashville. He quit that job to move to Chattanooga. The plan was originally that when he moved down, I’d take care of money and bills and stuff while he found another job. But that didn’t go as planned. We didn’t talk about it much, because I didn’t want to make him feel any more insecure than any guy already is in that situation. The last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad about it. It didn’t make sense to complain, anyway, when he was always taking care of Bentley while I was at school. It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing anything.

But at the same time, my own life had finally gained some focus and momentum. I was in school, the show was in full force, and I was finding tons of opportunities to pursue in the field I was studying. But Kyle didn’t seem to have an ambition to do anything. It started to feel like we were drifting into different places, and it made me uneasy.

Other red flags sprouted up here and there. Sometimes when Bentley was at Ryan’s house, Kyle and I would go out with friends. And once in awhile, drama would come up at the bar or among the people around us and I would want to remove myself from the situation. But it felt like if I got uncomfortable with something, whether it was people fighting around us or me and him arguing, he didn’t take me seriously. It made me feel like if shit were to really hit the fan, I couldn’t be sure he would have my back. In those situations, it was like he wasn’t my partner. I felt like even if he was wrong and being stupid and ridiculous, I would have his back and go home with him. I could tell him he was a dumbass in the morning, if I wanted. Whenever any unpleasantness came up, he preferred to pretend it hadn’t. I didn’t like how easy it was for him to tune out how I was feeling.

Considering all the time we’d spent talking since we first met, I didn’t expect communication to be one of our weak spots. But any time there was an issue or an argument, Kyle would completely, one hundred percent shut it down. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to discuss it. He wanted to push it under the rug and pretend it never happened. I really struggled with that. I didn’t hold grudges when I was unhappy, but I liked to get my point across and felt I was being heard. And in the same way, I wanted him to let me know if I was doing something that made him unhappy, because I wanted to be the best that I could be in our relationship. But it was impossible for us to grow when we were absolutely incapable of talking about any problems.

Kyle just hated conflict, and he was an expert at avoiding it. But that’s the kind of problem that can last a long time. It bothered me, but no matter what, we’d wake up in the morning and be fine.

In fact, we bought a house. It was an old foreclosed house that needed a ton of updating, and we got it so we could fix it up and sell it. We were still attached to each other, and our relationship was basically as strong and peaceful as ever. But once we moved into that house, the challenges started to grow. I had a lot going on, but I didn’t have a regular nine to five job. In between speaking engagements, the radio show, and school, I could be at home. And since he didn’t have a job, he was always there, too. That meant we were spending a lot of time together, which is often a challenge in itself. But my uneasiness with his lack of ambition made it all the more difficult. The more time we were together at home, the more I started to feel like there was a space growing between us.

We’d always talked to each other about anything and everything. We’d shared that close connection for years. But suddenly we realized it wasn’t there anymore. Once our issues and struggles became about each other, we were never able to talk like that again.

CHAPTER 17:

BETTER THAN HERE

i know I’ve never been good with words

except when I’m speaking on paper

so i’ll allow the sound to flow

from my pen through ink like vapor

first i want to thank you

for bringing me back to my comfort zone

above my notebook, pen in hand

writing my thoughts, being alone

I’m just sorry it’s under these circumstances

but know what I’m writing is to cure

and no matter how long we are apart

our love will maintain pure

i hope you know what i think of you

and the person that you are

i’d like to see you grow and learn

with me only watching from afar

i’ll get into what I’ve been wanting to say

and while you read what I’m speaking

remember no matter how much i love you

this isn’t the pain that you’re seeing

I’m not sure where you went

or why i let you go

i got tired of fighting for hurt

and i thought i’d let you know

maybe I’m the one who’s running

not running from what we had

but to where i need to be

a place without the bad

I’ve missed you as my friend

thats all i want you to be

and maybe by placing you back there

i can learn to be free

crazy because I’m fine

but that is all I’ve ever been

i want something to feel