Read Online My Reality by Melissa Rycroft - Free Book Online

to Los Angeles for the audition, and so I had to leave vacation a few days early to meet with the producers.
    I wasn’t nervous or anxious at all. I never thought I would make it, and so the whole experience just seemed beyond belief. Once I got to LA, there was a car waiting to take me to the hotel where we were meeting. Once we arrived there, a producer was outside waiting to greet me. She seemed nice enough.
    Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.
    She showed me to my room to drop off my bag, then escorted me immediately to where all the producers were set up.
    First I did a one-on-one interview with a producer. She askedme a few generic questions that I’m sure everyone’s been asked at one time or another, and I simply answered them the best I could.
    So I answered, smiled, and had fun with the process. I didn’t answer anything too seriously—I wanted to be funny and show that I had a sense of humor.
    After the one-on-one interview, I was led into a room where—without any warning—I was suddenly face-to-face with a slew of producers, who were all sitting around a table staring at me. They made me sit up front and face them all.
    Intimidate much?!
    The strange thing was that I still wasn’t the least bit nervous. While I was sitting there, I had this thought that made me feel totally calm: They can’t ask me a question I don’t know the answer to because it’s all about me.
    I also thought of it as a charade to see if I could cover up how I was really feeling, which was still about as heartbroken as I’d ever been. I never cried on camera. I never said anything directly about my relationship with Tye. I was acting like this really strong, independent woman. And it worked. (Well, I think it did. But, then, for all I know, they might have been on to me the whole time.) Even though I was still a mess inside, there was something about pretending to be put together that started to make me feel like I was that powerful woman I wanted to be, and that made it all easier.
    It helped, too, that, somehow, I immediately had a good sense of my boundaries. They knew that I had been a professional cheerleader, and one of the producers tried very hard to get me to do a cheer.
    I can’t be THAT girl. If I dance and cheer now, they’ll expect me to dance and cheer on the TV show . . . and that’s just not me.
    I smiled to make sure I didn’t seem rude.
    “I don’t really cheer,” I said. “I mean, the cheerleaders are dancers anyhow. They’re not cheerleaders.”
    “Well, then, do a dance,” the producer said. “We want to see a dance.”
    I could tell that they wanted to see how far I’d go on TV.
    “No,” I said firmly. “I’d rather not. I’m not really comfortable doing that. And I’m not dressed appropriately.”
    There was their answer to how far I would go: not far at all.
    When I left, I figured I had totally blown it, because I didn’t do what they wanted me to do. They probably wanted me to be that girl who would be THE DANCER on the show. But I didn’t care. I was glad that I hadn’t compromised myself. (How ironic that it actually took me doing a television show that I didn’t really care about to inspire me to stand up for myself, and launch a change in my life that played a big role in my destiny.)
    About a week later, I got another package from The Bachelor in the mail.
    No way! . . . This has got to be a rejection letter or something . . . It can’t be ANOTHER round of auditions.
    I opened the package, and what do you know? It was a formal acceptance letter to be on the show! They wanted me to be a cast member! All I had to do was sign the enclosed contract by a certain date, and it would be official.
    At first, I still couldn’t believe I’d made it, even after this whole, long process I’d been through. Then, the reality of it all set in, and I realized that there was one huge obstacle I had to face before I could go on the show:
    Tye.
    Of course, I received the packet containing