Somehow discovering my birth mother had cheated on my dad who was so wonderful, and all because she wasbored,hit me in a place I never expected. It royally fucked with my head. I saw all the things I hated about myself inherin that moment.
The breakdown in front of my family was the culmination of everything that had happened in the past few years.
The stress of my job, the way the public picked me apart, finding out about Francine, and Fyfe. He was the one person who knew everything I was going through … and he didn’t want me enough to want to risk the status quo. I’d never connected with someone the way I connected with Fyfe. It seemed to me then that if he didn’t want me, there had to be something wrong with me. That everything I’d grown to hate about myself must be true.
That was the breaking point. I had work to do to stop focusing on all the things I didn’t like about myself.
I had to change my life.
Now I had the support of my family to do that.
Mum, Dad, Lewis, and Mor were so concerned after that awful scene, they suggested I speak with someone. Honestly, I felt a ton better just unleashing everything that had been roiling inside me for years. But for them, I agreed to see a therapist.
I had a session a week while I worked on my final season ofYoung Adult.
And itwasmy final season.
I’d decided to retire from acting.
While I felt nothing but relief, and with the help of my family and therapy, a sense of excitement about the possibilities of my future, I lost a friendship that mattered to me.
Jasper.
When I refused to sign on for another season of the show, the writers decided it was time to reboot it with a younger cast. The show was, after all, titledYoung Adult. Those remaining from the original lineup, including Jasper, were out of a job. And my friend blamed me.
That was crushing.
A person who had stood by me through this crazy business seemed to only find me useful as a friend if I was acting and offering him something in return other than friendship. That awful realization made me more grateful to my family, who had been in constant communication these past few months.
I’d never seen my dad so happy and relieved to see me as when he picked me up at the airport. The showrunner had given me permission to take a long weekend off filming. To be in my brother’s wedding.
The drive from Inverness Airport was the first time Dad and I had been alone since my wee breakdown a few months ago.
“How’s my Eilidh-Bug doing?” he asked as we hit the A9 toward home.
At the endearment, one he hadn’t used since I was a young teen, a swell of emotion filled me. It took me a minute to speakbefore I reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m better, Dad. So much better. I have to keep my socials for another eight months to help with the promo of the show’s final season because they buried that in the contract, but once it’s done, I’ll delete my social media and I’m going to try to be just Eilidh again.”
“And it’s definitely what you want?”
“It is.”
“How’s … how’s the therapy going?” he asked tentatively.
“You know I didn’t want to go.” I offered him a dry smile because I’d gone for his and my family’s sake. “But Diana, my therapist, is making me see that I’ve allowed all the shitty things that have been said about me online, in the media, to fester more than I consciously knew.”
His fists tightened around the steering wheel, but Dad didn’t respond. I knew that one of the reasons he hadn’t wanted me to go into acting was because of the fame aspect and the deadly court of public opinion.
“We’ve been talking about how those things have given me a warped sense of self and how I conflated the opinions of strangers with the reality of who I was because I was secretly unhappy with my career choice. I’d turned that unhappiness into failure and catastrophized how big that failure is. She’s making me see that most young people end up not enjoying what they choose as their first career. The difference is the one I chose involved fame, which is a strange beast for anyone to deal with. She’s making me see that it doesn’t mean I’m a failure if I’m not built to handle the scrutiny. It’s so much worse for celebrities now because of social media. Someone will always find a reason to hate you or be outraged, and when it’s on the level I had to deal with, it’s basically mass harassment and bullying masquerading as opinions, and no one can admit that because they genuinely think they’re entitled to say whatever the fuckthey want about you. So, long story short, I can’t do fame and social media, and that’s okay.”
Dad’s expression was tender. “She sounds like a very wise woman.”
I nodded, tears burning my eyes. I’d also been extremely emotional since I’d started therapy. It was great for my work on the show but frustrating in real life. Diana told me it was normal. I’d been suppressing my feelings for so long, they were just spilling out of me. “I’m sorry for what I said to you that day. About Francine.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Eilidh-Bug.”
“I do, Dad. I blew that up into something it wasn’t. I know if I’d come to you as Lewis did that you would have told me the truth.”
“I would have.” He cleared his throat. “Eilidh, Francine made a mistake. A big mistake. But she was going through something. Looking back, now that we know more, I often wonder if she had postpartum depression. Her moods, the affair, it was out of character.”
