One Day You'll Thank Me Read online

  “Cam, there’s a guy you have to meet,” she said. Mona was a Realtor and this guy was one of her clients.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I’m sick of men right now and don’t want to date anyone for a while. A long while.”

  “I know. I know. I get it. But this guy is one in a million. I promise,” Mona insisted. Sure, that’s what they all say, I thought.

  “No thanks,” I repeated.

  But Mona pushed and pushed, so I finally agreed to meet Mr. One in a Million—begrudgingly. Yes, I was still over men and, yes, I was still going to stick to my plan to be solo for a long time. I was ONLY agreeing to go out with the guy because I thought a lot of my friend and if I could trust anyone to set me up on a blind date, it was Mona. Her guy’s name was Jason, and he and I made plans to have dinner on Sullivan’s Island, a small beach town about twenty minutes from downtown Charleston. It has several cute, no-frills restaurants and is a great spot for a first date. His idea, not mine. The morning of the date I woke up with a pit in my stomach, feeling like it was a big mistake. I’m not ready. I just DON’T want to date anyone, I thought. As strange as this may sound, I’d actually never been on a blind date, so by the time 6 P.M. came around, my stomach was in knots and I was sweating. I was dreading the awkward small talk that comes when you meet someone for the first time or—even worse—the painful moments of silence that can linger when you have nothing to say. Good Lord! What the heck am I doing? Also, my date was nine years older than me, which seemed like a lot at the time, and a doctor. He’s probably a huge nerd and will be way too serious, I thought as I did my hair and makeup. I also contemplated the fact that this guy was a doctor. He may be a nerd, but he’s done something with his life My biggest accomplishment so far is being on MTV! Is that even an accomplishment? Oh my God, what will we have in common? Probably not one thing. Still, I forced myself to get dressed, get in my car and go.

  You drive from Charleston to Sullivan’s Island by taking the Ben Sawyer Bridge, a swing bridge that connects the town of Mount Pleasant with the island. When I got there, the bridge was in the process of opening to let a sailboat through, and traffic came to a complete halt for a good fifteen minutes. Maybe this is a sign that I should turn around, I wondered. I even thought about calling my date and faking a migraine to get out of it. But for some reason, I didn’t, and I’m so glad.

  Jason and I first saw each other in the parking lot while getting out of our cars and right off the bat, I could tell that he was SO different from anyone I had ever dated in the past. He was subdued, calm, collected and soft-spoken, with zero ego. Yet he was very sure of himself. He seemed super genuine and looked me right in the eye when talking. I felt an immediate ease around him. Unlike so many guys, he spoke very little of himself on our first date and instead asked a lot about me. There was not one ounce of him that I felt was trying to show off in any way. It was very refreshing. I could tell he was intrigued by me and wanted to get to know me, not just get into my pants. I felt like I was on a date with a REAL MAN for the first time. All in all, despite my nerves and worries and the fact that we were total opposites, the date went very well. At one point, I reached over with my fork to taste something on his plate. He later told me he was shocked I did that on a first date, but it shows that I somehow felt comfortable enough with him to, well, not use my best manners. Luckily, he wasn’t turned off.

  “I’d like to see you again,” Jason said, very directly, as he walked me to my car. No games. Wow, I thought. This is a first.

  “Okay, sure,” I said.

  I was very happy as I drove home, but I also didn’t feel any immediate chemistry, something I’d always thought was super important. Still, in my gut I liked this guy. A couple of days later he called while I was driving.

  “I know this might be a little much for a second date, but I have two tickets to see Prince in concert. Would you like to go?” UM, PRINCE?… YES!!! I couldn’t answer him fast enough. It was on that date that I knew I was going to marry this man. He let his guard down a bit and I got to see his humorous side. The chemistry started kicking in. Now I really wanted to go on a third date. And, well, the rest is history.

  It was definitely a whirlwind romance. Jason was and is so different from the macho, egocentric guys I’d always dated. Jason was the first guy who was a complete gentleman with me. He was always respectful… almost to a fault. He didn’t even try to kiss me until our fifth date! He is confident without being cocky. He is also very warmhearted and super laid-back. And very, very important to me both at the time and now is that Jason is the most sincere and faithful human I know. He rarely gets rattled, so if shit is going down, he is the person that you want in the room. In fact, he has raised his voice at me only one time in nine years. It was back when we were dating. We were on his boat and got caught in some very rough water. I was totally freaking out, pacing back and forth, screaming, “OMG. WE ARE GONNA DIE,” grabbing life jackets and acting like a total fool. Of course, Jason was trying to stay calm so he could concentrate and steer the boat. I wouldn’t shut up, and my frenetic energy wasn’t helping the situation in the least. He finally looked at me and said very loudly, “You need to be quiet and sit the f*** down.” Guess what? I got real quiet and sat the f*** down. But you know what else is different about Jason? How I knew he was THE one? Jason has never said anything even remotely negative to me, not even in a teasing way. Some guys I had dated would say little demeaning things to me that weren’t outright mean, but still made me feel insecure. Looking back, I realize they did this because they were the ones who were insecure. A good man who is secure in himself won’t ever demean you, and Jason has never, EVER put me down. Ever. Not even in the slightest way. Now, let me tell you, that’s when you KNOW you have a good man. (I also know I got a good one because he’s never once complained about my side of the bathroom or the fact that I hoard makeup and beauty products, and trust me, I’ve got a lot of them.) And I was totally wrong about doctors being nerds. Sure, doctors are married to their profession in a lot of ways (Jason will work forty-eight hours straight some weekends), but the flip side of the coin is that they are typically very committed and solid individuals.

  People often ask me what Jason initially thought of my having been on The Real World, but he had never even seen the show. After all, when it aired, he was in the middle of medical school—clearly, a much more valiant path in life. He knew I was on the show because some people had told him, but to be honest, he never really asked me about it. He also didn’t judge me for it. Reality TV has never been on his radar, which may be one of the reasons we get along.

  Jason and I dated for three years before we got engaged. Both of our families vacationed at a little beach town called Edisto Island, and that is where he proposed. I wish I could say I was surprised, but here’s why I wasn’t. The sun was setting and I had just taken a shower. I wasn’t wearing any makeup and my hair was soaking wet. Jason came to me and said, “Let’s go take a walk on the beach.”

  “Okay,” I said, putting on my flip-flops.

  “Well… um… shouldn’t you go fix your hair first?” Unfortunately, nothing gets past me, so my radar was up. Oh shit, I thought. He’s gonna propose and doesn’t want me to look like I just woke up. So I dried my hair, put on a little makeup and, sure enough, ten minutes later we were engaged. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  A week or so later, I had to make one thing clear to Jason. “Just so you know, if kids are a nonnegotiable for you, you can’t marry me because I might not give them to you. The last thing I want you to do is resent me or us end up divorced because you want a child and I don’t.” I had brought this up randomly in conversation while we were dating but wanted to be crystal clear now that we were moving on to the next step in our relationship.

  “Cameran, if it happens, it happens. But if not, I love you and want to marry you,” Jason said.

  When we got married, I was thirty years old, which is considered ancient in the So
uth. In fact, I was one of the last of my group of friends to tie the knot. But I think as you get older you know what you want, and it’s definitely worth waiting for the right person. Also, choosing the right partner is paramount when having children, and even though I didn’t want children at the time, I knew Jason would be a great father if I ever changed my mind.

  I’m fine admitting that the smartest decision I ever made was marrying Jason. We got married in a beautiful outdoor ceremony beneath a large live oak, and I had Mona do a special reading there because I see her as my fairy godmother who brought Jason to me. It was a very Southern wedding. Except for the fact that I chose to walk down the aisle by myself, which is pretty much blasphemy in Southern culture. It just felt odd to me to be “given away.” I also knew I wanted both of my parents involved in some way, so they both escorted me arm in arm to the beginning of the aisle and then individually walked down before me. When I saw Jason and started walking, I cried happy tears the whole way down.

  I’m not saying Jason is perfect. On our honeymoon we were late for our flight, so Jason ran ahead. HE got on the plane, but I didn’t make it, so they closed the door.

  “You have to let me on this flight,” I told the gate agent, in tears. “This is my honeymoon.”

  “We’re sorry, but it’s illegal to open the door once it’s closed,” she said, shaking her head. After a lot more begging and crying, the gate agent either felt sympathy toward me or wanted me out of her face, so she eventually opened the door. When I saw Jason, I said, “You left me,” and the rest of the passengers booed him. Turns out he thought he could hold the plane for me. (He also once bought me a South Carolina lifetime hunting and fishing license as a gift. I’d rather have had a designer bag, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?)

  Besides that, the biggest thing we argue about is Jason’s ability to be on time. He is laid-back to a fault. His friends in college called him SoCo (short for Southern Comfort) due to his nonchalant nature. To me, being on time is actually late, and I prefer to be early. I have started MANY fights about this. Out of all the faults one could have, though, it could be much worse. He is a good egg and our married life has been really great. And I think it’s been really great, in part, because I chose to keep it off of reality television. People often asked me why Jason was not on Southern Charm. They thought it was because he didn’t approve of it, but that’s not the case. He was actually a big fan and was very good friends with everyone in the cast; in fact, Jason was the one who pushed me to do it every season. He always supported my filming the show even though he wanted no part of the spotlight.

  Luckily, Jason was always okay with the fact that I am not a “homemaker” type. Before the wedding, I registered for very expensive Mottahedeh china, and I’ve served a meal on it once. I don’t entertain. I don’t cook Thanksgiving dinner. I’m pretty useless in the kitchen except for pulling the meat off a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and pairing it with some premade potato salad from the deli. When I bake cookies, they are the ones you pull apart from frozen dough. I suck at cleaning, too. We don’t have any type of cleaning service come to the house because it weirds me out, so I’m the maid… and not a very good one. Sometimes I realize our sheets haven’t been changed in a month. Oops. Bless Jason’s heart, he never complains.

  The bottom line when it comes to relationships is to think about the big picture, which is the rest of your life. A good relationship is meeting each other halfway. If one person is always making deposits and the other is always taking, taking, taking, it’s a recipe for disaster. Communication and compromise must be the foundations of your relationship. There’s a lot of shit I do that I don’t want to do to appease my husband and a lot of shit he does that he doesn’t want to do to appease me. THAT’s called marriage. A book that was a game changer for me relationship-wise was The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. The gist is that every person has a love language: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation or Receiving Gifts. I am Quality Time and Jason is Acts of Service. Knowing what your partner’s love language is and being able to fulfill it is SO important. If you are with someone who doesn’t understand what your love language is or, even worse, isn’t able to give it to you, then your relationship is not going to be easy. So I can tell Jason how much I love him all day long, but he needs to be shown that I care. I know this about Jason and try my hardest to do things for him like not overreacting to something stupid (which I have a natural tendency to do), helping him with yard work or making him a meal when he has had a long, hard day. These things are not natural for me, but I work to be conscious of them because I love him.

  Although it was tough to go through some heartbreak and distrust and guys who just didn’t appreciate me, it was well worth all that pain to find Jason. Dating is totally a learning experience, and no relationship is ever a failure if you grow from it. Like the saying goes, “If you wanna get to the castle, you gotta swim the moat.”

  Chapter Three SHOULD I OR SHOULDN’T I?

  Coming to the Decision to Get Pregnant

  It’s good to do uncomfortable things.

  It’s weight training for life.

  —ANNE LAMOTT, MOTHER OF ONE

  Just because you have a vagina doesn’t mean you should pop out a kid. In fact, a lot of people SHOULDN’T pop them out, and I thought for most of my life that included me. I admit it. I could not imagine sitting at home all day with a baby. Honestly, that was my version of hell. I was not one of those little girls who played with dolls or one of those teenagers who was babysitting every kid in the neighborhood. In my twenties and early thirties, the idea of me having a maternal instinct was as farfetched as me skipping Chick-fil-A for a week. Not happening! Heck, I never had a houseplant that lived longer than four weeks.

  I loved that my twenties and early thirties were all about me, me, me. I knew that if I brought a child into this world I was not going to half-ass it, so I would have to be at a point in my life when I was willing to stop being the center of my own universe. So three years into our marriage, when Jason made it crystal clear that he was ready to be a parent, I wondered: was I?

  As I’ve mentioned, my family has been in South Carolina for ten generations, and growing up in this part of the country, you’re taught that you’re supposed to want the white picket fence and get married and pregnant in your twenties. (I have childhood friends who have teenagers now.) And you don’t have just one kid, you have to have at least two. I don’t subscribe to that. In my opinion, parenthood is a choice, not a given, and in my early thirties, I was nowhere near ready to get knocked up. In fact, I was doing everything I could each month not to get pregnant. Seeing some of my friends struggle with motherhood reaffirmed my belief that you should only bring a child into this world when you are damn ready for it, when you are aching for it, and there was no ache in my body for a child.

  Before we got engaged, I told Jason, “If having a kid is nonnegotiable for you, don’t marry me.” Well, he still married me, and my mind didn’t change. That said, Jason is nine years older than me, and it was only a matter of time before he started talking about the pitter-patter of little feet. Damn, I thought. I was kind of hoping we could practice for or even stave off a baby with a pup, but no such luck. (In the end, we wound up with a baby AND a dog.) When we’d see a kid doing something like throwing a football with his dad, Jason would say, “That will be so nice,” while I’d think, Kids are assholes. Not to mention my fear of actually being pregnant! I thought pregnancy was, well, kind of gross and I worried about all the changes that would happen to my body. (Who knew how much I’d love having boobs and hips? At least while pregnant. But more on that later!) Another fear? I was petrified that I couldn’t properly carry a baby to term because I’m a small woman. It didn’t help when one of Jason’s colleagues who is an ob-gyn saw me and said, “Wow… you’re a textbook C-section. Your hips are way too small to deliver vaginally.” Um… thanks?

  Everyone around me
was on the Cameran-should-have-a-baby bandwagon. “Do it now. It’s the time. You’ll be so great,” they’d tell me. They’d actually been saying that for years. But since they weren’t the ones who’d have to cook the kid for nine months and then push him or her out of their swollen vag, I didn’t want to hear their opinions. To an outsider, there was no reason why I shouldn’t have a baby. I was happily married, I was financially stable and Jason and I both have loving, supportive families. But I didn’t feel like I was equipped for the job.

  If Jason hadn’t wanted a kid, I wouldn’t have had anything to worry about. But he believed in his heart all along that one day I would be ready, too, and the fact that I still wasn’t concerned me. If I never decide to have a child, will Jason resent me? I wondered. So I had to take a deeper look at what was going on. Was my indecision rooted in the anxiety I’ve struggled with for most of my life? Or was I simply not maternal? I decided to see a therapist. At our first session, she asked, “When you think of having a child, are you gaining something or giving up something?” OMG. That hit me like a ton of bricks.