Christy Carlson Romano: My Private Breakdown

I once paid a psychic $40,000 for a crystal because I thought it would fix my broken life. Is that the kind of thing Ren Stevens would do?

Many of you know me as the girl from that TV show or movie you once saw on the Disney Channel. Maybe you saw me on Broadway or in a Lifetime Movie. I am an actress and if you were going to define my “brand” you might say I was “perfect” or “pulled together.”

I’m here to throw a wrench at that image.

While many witnessed my costar Shia LaBeouf struggle publicly, I have largely suffered in silence. I am not a victim, but I have never been perfect or pulled together as my reputation or the successes of my young adulthood might suggest. During a period of time in my life, I grappled with depression, drinking, and more, desperate to find fixes for how I felt.

I won’t be the last child actor to tell you the pitfalls of early-onset fame. But if I’ve learned anything from these experiences, it’s that being famous should come second to creating a life that you personally feel fulfilled with.

I started acting at six years old, a time when most kids are just going into elementary school and learning to socialize with their peers. I learned phrases like triple threat while mastering singing, dancing, and acting lessons in an effort to be one. Until I landed my first main role on Even Stevens when I was 14 — which relocated me to Los Angeles, away from my family on the East Coast — I traveled the country with musical road shows and took the train into New York City from my small town in Connecticut.

I became that precocious theater kid, a confusing mix of sheltered and overexposed to the public. It came with the territory of being a young performer. While I was adept at change and very driven in my art form, I was delayed in some developmental milestones that one often has in their preteen years that adequately inform their early adulthood and help them make the right decisions during hard times. I only learned to ride a bike at 12 years old because I had a callback for a cereal commercial. I had very few friends my own age and lacked the ability to communicate my emotions effectively due to my insecurities with being different. Needing to be liked was my full-time job and constant concern of mine.

Nothing could have prepared me for fame and the responsibilities that came with being on television screens everywhere. I was somewhat protected (or stultified) by staying on my set and making friends with whoever showed up to be cast as my best friend that week. I worked full days and would go home and be tutored in a different subject every night. The idea of one day having a college life became my greatest fantasy. I would watch teen movies and become intensely jealous of “normal” kids, feeling, at my moodiest, like a misfit.

A tape inside my head softly began to play, telling me I wasn’t good enough in either the normal or entertainment world. Despite all my public successes, inside I was insecure. I had a swinging confidence in my abilities which pushed me to get on camera, perform, and make money. My personal value was irrelevant until validated by my most recent accomplishment. I had no idea how much money I had in the bank or had made since starting a grueling workload, and I was told that leaving Hollywood right after Even Stevens would ruin my career. In retrospect, it probably did. But in my heart, I was running away from the responsibility of fame and toward a glamorized fantasy of adolescence.

Even Stevens ended the summer before my start at an Ivy League school that fall. I was thrilled to enter a new world and was suddenly surrounded by so many different types of people my age; not just child stars with momagers. I put on a brave face but still felt out of place, like a misfit. My heart broke when I realized that I was never going to experience the teen-movie happy ending with a group of friends in a Jeep on their way to the beach. I felt like I failed myself, and the tape that had started playing years before now started to play louder, faster, and angrier.

I ran from school and back into the arms of the New York theater community. What I didn’t realize was that starring in a Broadway show was very hard work for a 19-year-old. I was highly criticized for my youth, which fueled my desire to prove everybody wrong. I became a bit harder-edged, binge-drank more at loud nightclubs, and started to accept the transient natures of love, sex, and friendship. Growing up, I entertained thousands of families only to feel completely lonely. People were as replaceable as they had deemed me to be. Imposter syndrome had stiff competition against my self-hatred at that point.

Then I began to flirt with other methods of self-destruction. I tried to scratch my skin with my fingernail because I was too scared to use a knife. I chickened out and honestly felt like I had failed some important race to win the trophy for “most tragic, beautiful girl.” One night, a psychic approached me at the stage door and offered me a reading and her card. She said I needed guidance and that I wasn’t on the right path. I couldn’t help but feel immediately attracted to someone with answers. While on the outside everyone thought I knew what I was doing with my life, I was willing to go to desperate lengths to try to have someone else tell me what my truths were.

A couple of months later, I paid her thousands for a “life-changing” crystal. Days later when the psychic stopped returning my calls and began threatening me, I had some clarity on having been conned. I confessed up to the purchase, having kept this relationship a secret. I was told to just move on unless I wanted this to go public. I felt marked, used, and violated so I started to blame myself for everything instead of learning from my past mistakes and growing as a person.

It’s hard for people to understand that oftentimes child actors appear to have an inflated ego to make up for the fact that they have no idea who they really are underneath it all, a defense mechanism that many young people are familiar with. I have two friends from my earlier Disney Channel days who died by suicide. You can search their names, I am sure, to try and find some sense in their deaths, but you can never understand what was going on behind closed doors. And though I might not know their exact struggles, I do believe I have an idea of how being in the spotlight can warp your sense of reality.

I struggled with all of my relationships, alcohol usage, and career path for 10 years before going back to school and re-centering myself. I ended up meeting my husband in a screenwriting class and found in him a companionship that would take a mallet to the tape that had been screaming in my head all those years.

It sounds super cheesy, but I rewrote the end of my script in that class when I fell in love. In many ways, my husband's adolescent struggles were worse than mine and he ended up joining the military to find guidance. I had an empowering realization that famous people aren't unique. I am happy to say that we got married and now have two beautiful daughters.

I haven't had a drink since before my first pregnancy and am going to continue to abstain from alcohol so that I can continue to make clear-headed decisions that keep me on the right path. All that matters now is my amazing family. When I look back I can see that it's all I ever wanted. I’m also in control of my career. The beauty of the entertainment industry today is that you can create what you want to, a privilege that we didn’t have when I was coming up. With YouTube and the other social media platforms, smart, savvy people with talent can do it all themselves. Even those who are established are crossing over into making content this way because there’s no red tape to cut through, myself included. Since I’m obsessed with cooking, my team and I are officially launching my YouTube series Christy’s Kitchen Throwback on June 27. Through these videos, fans will get to see a new side of me where I’m geeking out over kitchenware and cooking themed dishes with everyone from fellow stars of the ‘90s and aughts to some of today’s biggest YouTube personalities.

While writing this, I am reminded that my mom bought me a new, small collector’s crystal every time I booked a job, from the time I was six years old. Funny that it took me over a decade to see the connection between tragically spending so much money on a psychic crystal to heal myself and the crystal reward system I had as a kid. Anyone reading this, or anyone who decides to go into the entertainment business (including my daughters, should that time come), know this: having a clear understanding of your personal value helps to positively shape everything you do. If you don’t, if you aren't careful, you just might end up getting what everyone else wishes for but wondering what you want yourself.

Related: Alyson Stoner: How I Embraced My Sexual Identity

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue