Blessed Life Page 11

  I didn’t try to figure it out. I expressed my gratitude to God and then asked my agent where I signed. It turned out my work was submitted to the show’s executive producer, Brian Robbins, a former teen actor who had appeared years earlier on Facts of Life as Natalie’s love interest. Brian liked that I knew comedy and what it was like to be a child actor—and a funny one. And I got the job.

  They shot over the summer in Florida. It was during Living Single’s hiatus, so it was perfect for me. As soon as we wrapped, Johnathon and I decamped to Orlando. They put us up in the Peabody Hotel, a luxury offshoot of the famous hotel in Memphis. For my first episode, I left Johnathon to play golf and visit his family nearby while I drove my rental car along Interstate 4 to Universal Studios, blasting the Eagles’ “Hotel California” on the radio. I loved that drive. By the time I parked in front of the Nickelodeon soundstage, I was in the zone. My sleeves were rolled up and I was ready for work.

  I directed four episodes that first season and loved every minute, including the commute from LA. I was able to exercise different creative muscles and draw on years of experience. I was comfortable in that world. I also liked the people. Brian and his partner, Michael Tollin, and their buddy, Dan Schneider, another former-teen-actor-turned-writer, were great guys. I felt the same about Kenan and Kel, both of whom were gifted sketch comedy artists and impressive young men.

  On the set, I admired their attitude and approach to their work. They did not behave like typical teenagers. They applied themselves to every scene. They knew they were good and wanted to get even better. Off-camera, I was blessed to have many candid conversations with them and the entire cast and crew about life and the importance of developing interests beyond the show to ensure they grew as human beings. I figured I was clicking with the guys when Brian and Michael asked me back the next season.

  I looked forward to it. The fourth season of Living Single was marked by the ups and downs of a seasoned show where everyone, from the stars to the producers and writers, looked for their next moves. It’s the nature of the business to capitalize on success. Our showrunner, Yvette, was developing a new series for the network. I was given the opportunity to direct an episode. Dana was making a movie. John headlined comedy clubs. No one gave less than one hundred percent, but the entire cast expected the show to improve each season, and given how strong we came out of the gate, that kind of high standard was probably unrealistic.

  Living Single was good, period. I had to embrace that fact—and maybe that was enough.

  On top of that, my marriage was starting to wobble. Now, there are at least two sides to every story about why a relationship goes awry, and I’m sure that’s true of mine. More than a year into our marriage, Johnathon discovered that being Kim Fields’s husband was not without its challenges. Hey, just being Kim Fields had its challenges. At times, he felt like he was married to all of black Hollywood. Other times, he found a woman wrestling with the insecurities and frustrations that come with working in Hollywood. Then, at night, perhaps, he wanted Regine and instead got a woman who fell into bed in an old T-shirt after working a sixteen-hour day.

  That’s not to say I didn’t get my sexy on. I had a picture of who I wanted to be as a wife, but I didn’t always know how to execute. Over time, I’m still learning more of the nuances: how to be sexy, how to be sensual, how to let my husband know that I desire and need him. But that’s called experience. Yet, I’m still a work a progress; we all are, if we’re honest. We are all always learning about ourselves and each other—under construction.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that Johnathon and I were still getting to know each other, which was complicated because we were still getting to know ourselves. To that end, I took acting classes from Ivana Chubbuck, one of Hollywood’s premiere teachers. Her techniques, which were emotionally heavy and raw, pushed me into uncharted waters when it came to examining my emotions, and that bled into other areas. As a result, I started seeing a therapist. I found it beneficial to talk about the way I felt my life, at age twenty-eight, was changing in ways I couldn’t always control or understand.

  One of the things I worked on in therapy was more acceptance of my body, both the parts I liked and didn’t like. I played a woman who was comfortable and confident when it came to her womanly attributes and I worked on adding more Regine in my real-life roles as a woman, a wife, and my husband’s lover. To do that, I needed to like my body, to be able to stand in front of a mirror and see it as a positive and to put on clothes—or take them off—and feel at ease and secure. That process led me to a second breast reduction, this time for purely aesthetic reasons.

  I had the procedure in the middle of the summer, during a break from directing new episodes of Kenan and Kel, and after years of struggling with my body image, I finally felt like I was in proportion from head to toe. Less than ten days later, I was back on the set in Orlando, and not only did I direct that week’s episode, but I also acted in it. I played Kenan’s substitute English teacher. He thought I had a crush on him. In one sequence, he had a dream in which we did a very funny tango. I forgot my chest was wrapped in bandages and I was on heavy-duty Advil for the next week.

  * * *

  Like me, Johnathon was trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. In addition to his work, he began taking acting classes again. As a former college athlete, he told me he missed the rush of competing in front of a crowd and thought acting might be a good substitute. I supported it as a hobby. But at some point, Johnathon decided to pursue acting full-time, which was his prerogative. But it was a game-changer for me. Though I didn’t want to kill his dreams, I had already pledged my support to one career change, and this one was even riskier.

  We had many talks, during which I found out Johnathon was also thinking about going to qualifying school and competing on the pro golf circuit. Like so many of us, he was trying to figure out the answers, the moves and paths for his next phase of life. But unlike most people, Johnathon’s search was driven by deeper issues stemming from childhood. At age seven, he had been taken from his mother in Vietnam, was put on a plane to America, and was eventually adopted by a family in Boston.

  This was in 1975, the same year my mom had auditioned for Hello, Dolly! How different our lives were: While I was watching actors prepare for their roles onstage, Johnathon was one of ten thousand babies and small children, some presumably orphans, who were part of a mass evacuation known as Operation Babylift. Obviously not all of the children were orphans, my husband being an example. I imagined Johnathon as a little boy being torn from his mother’s arms. I tried to picture that happening to me. It was too horrific.

  Yet this was my husband’s reality. He’d experienced this nightmare and bore the scars. Now, as a grown-up, he wanted to see if he could find his family, reconnect with his mother, and heal some of those wounds. No wonder he was still trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted to do with his life.

  * * *

  In the meantime, as Living Single went into production of its fifth season, we heard whispers it would be the last one, and gradually word leaked from the network’s executive corridors indicating as much. The second episode was T.C.’s last until the finale, and the way that went down—with T.C. seeing the story line, asking if they were getting rid of him, being told no, and then getting told goodbye—underscored that we were ultimately part of a business. Nevertheless, we all felt that he deserved better.

  As the season continued, the characters were no longer being serviced by the scripts the way they had been in previous seasons, and while I can’t speak for others, the lack of the creative snap and crackle I loved as an actor took a toll on me. Some mornings I had to push myself to drive to the studio. I created exits and entrances for Regine to give the illusion that she still had a fulfilling life to live. In one episode, we were in the woods and a guy pulled a gun on us. I created a “faint” for Regine, so she didn’t have to be present for the rest of the scene, which we all felt wasn�
��t our above-par quality. Thankfully the “faint” and the exits fit Regine and were very funny, so I was allowed to keep them.

  When it got to the point where, if I wasn’t needed, I stayed in my trailer and read a book rather than hang with the cast and crew, I met with my manager and agents and asked them to negotiate an early exit. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said. “And I don’t want to. It’s hurting my soul.” I couldn’t believe those words were coming out of my mouth. Unfortunately, the studio refused to let me go early, reminding my team that I was under contract.

  What I really wanted was a production deal, an arrangement that would set up my company, but the studio declined that request, too. They agreed to phase me out with a story line that showed Regine getting the man—and the mansion—of her dreams, and in the end, I was satisfied when I took my final bow. Funny, I remember thinking about how uneventful and thankless the Facts of Life ending had been for a show and characters that had so much meaning and success for nearly a decade, yet Regine’s sendoff was the stuff dreams are made of for an actor, and all the Regines who do get their prince. I’ll always be grateful to Yvette and the writing team for that.

  * * *

  The stress at work didn’t help my marriage, which simultaneously sputtered to its own conclusion. Both Johnathon and I were dealing with personal issues, and looking back, we lacked the maturity and communication skills to work through them together. Marriage is a team effort, and we didn’t function like a team. The turning point came when Johnathon went to Vietnam just before Christmas, following new information that he hoped would lead him to his family.

  Though I prayed he would find his mother, he was gone for two weeks and during that whole time I never felt like my husband was halfway around the world. I never felt what I would describe as a missing piece in my soul. That’s the way it should feel when your partner is away. Instead, I felt more like my roommate was on vacation for a couple weeks. As I recall, this realization caused me to fall on my bed and cry. The truth was sad and painful and set in motion the end.

  I spoke to my pastor and my mother, prayed and meditated, and when Johnathon returned home, we spoke about the situation. He apologized and said he didn’t realize our relationship had gotten this bad. He suggested counseling, something I had put on the table six months earlier, but I was past that point now and let him know that for me our marriage was done.

  Johnathon packed some stuff he had brought upon moving in and took them, along with his bags from his trip to Vietnam, which were still packed, to a friend’s house. Seated on the couch, I watched him leave and sat there until the sun faded and the room turned dark, and I literally felt myself become enveloped in a cold silence. It was a sobering moment, a difficult one to accept and not feel like I had failed, but it was real and I gave myself permission to feel this way.

  Yes, I recalled that our former pastor had raised a cautionary flag about Johnathon and me getting married, but I was pretty sure our marriage ended for reasons other than those he’d cited. I also thought about the dark clouds and rain that had preceded our wedding day and wondered if I’d missed warning signs. Finally, I told myself that love in your twenties is a crapshoot. I thought I’d found the person for me. I thought I’d been found (“He who finds a wife finds a good thing” and all). I thought I was a good thing. But it worked out differently. Perhaps simultaneous identity challenges personally and professionally for us made the hard work of marriage ten times harder. When all was said and done, I was glad we didn’t waste each other’s time or hurt each other out of frustration. It was a deeply disappointing ending. Then at some point, I prayed to keep the wisdom but not bring the baggage to whatever and whoever might be in His plan for me. Most days, I subconsciously wondered to Him, You still got a plan, right?

  * * *

  Across town, my Living Single family took their final bows without me. My last episode had been a few weeks earlier. It was a bittersweet time, and then, as the weeks passed, it just turned bitter. Here I was, inching toward the latter part of my twenty-ninth year, and when I looked at my life, I thought, This isn’t what I signed on for, not based on the steps I’ve taken, the prayers I’ve said, the work I’ve done, and all the seeds I’ve planted. I was no longer on a TV show and didn’t have any projects lined up. My production company wasn’t producing any fruit. And I was about to be divorced.

  Dana once described me as someone who put her life in boxes. Everything was compartmentalized. Relationship in this box. Acting in that box. Body image issues in that one over there. Close the lid on the Living Single box. Hers was an accurate observation. She saw me. And at the time I was surrounding myself with boxes. I did not see it, but I was climbing into one of my own.

  I was frustrated.

  I was fading.

  I was…

  15

  Powerful

  I was stuck in a rut with no idea how to get unstuck, which meant it was going to be a difficult period in my life. And it was. With my marriage over, work strangely absent from my vocabulary, and little desire to do anything or see anyone, I retreated to my bedroom. One day, I went to Home Depot and bought several gallons of gold paint—not the loud gold but a muted, deep jewel gold, and I painted my beautiful white ceiling. A week or so later, I noticed some paint had dripped on the carpet. I picked at it, and then I pulled at it, and soon I was spending my days pulling up the carpet on my bedroom floor. I stopped when there was nothing but raw subfloor. I thought it was artsy. Now I’m like, What’s wrong with you?

  To complete the picture, I put blackout drapes over the windows. Forest green in color, they were thick and heavy. When closed, which was the way I kept them, they kept out the sunlight. My room was a constant shade of midnight, the only light coming from my television, which I watched from my large four-poster bed, a glorious, cushiony island of solitude from the Bombay Company. I loved it—no doubt a little too much for my own good.

  I spent every day there.

  Alone.

  In the dark.

  You do not need to be a therapist to understand the situation. On the cusp of turning thirty years old, I was a confused, pained, frustrated young woman. I was unsure of my footing; as far as I was concerned, I had none. The ground beneath me that had always been sound and sure was gone. Stuck between those two extremes, I climbed into bed, pulled up the covers, shut the drapes, and disappeared from the world.

  Why not? What was there to engage in? I was single and uninterested in starting a new social life. I did not have a show. And I had folded my company, freeing myself from the responsibility of salaries, office space, and development work, all of which went nowhere. I was completely unplugged from everything and everyone except one person—myself.

  Days went by. Several months passed. I lived what I call my Dark Ages. I could not understand why nothing had grown from the many seeds I had planted in seemingly fertile ground. I had nothing else to give, and every day I reminded myself of that by going through the roll call of my life.

  Marriage: Nope.

  Work: Nope.

  Spirit: Nope…Didn’t have anything left to give.

  Church: Nope.

  Reading my Word: Nope.

  Praying: Nope…I did not see the point. Was anyone listening?

  I thought there was merit to being real with God and literally saying out loud to him, as I routinely did, “You know my heart. You know all of this. None of this is taking You by surprise. But it’s taking me by surprise. And I’m horribly disappointed by where Your plan has taken me.”

  I never said the word depressed. I never claimed depression as the reason I had hung a Closed sign on my door. But I was horribly disappointed. Horribly disappointed. I could not understand how I had gotten to this place or how He had allowed for this to happen. I know this happens to people. You run out of explanations. You cannot find the pieces to the puzzle. You look up and wonder. You ask questions. You begin to doubt. I would sit in my bed and run through my resume with Him: “I’m
a tither. I go to church on Sunday. I serve at church. I’m public about your goodness. I never take credit for anything I do. I give You the glory. I’m one of your daughters. And this is how I’m treated? I don’t understand.”

  My mom was one of the few people I allowed to see me like this. “I’m just being real,” I told her one day. “I’m being real with myself—and God. I’m not trying to put on any front right now. It’s enough for me to just inhale and exhale.” She held my hand, fixed me lunch, and made sure she hugged me before she left. I appreciated the way she respected where I was. She didn’t tell me what to do. She did not try to make me feel better, convince me I was mistaken, talk me to death because she was nervous or uncomfortable herself or load me up with Scriptures—or all the phrases that are not necessarily Scripture but that church folk know to say. She would just be with me.

  A couple of friends also filled that role. They came, visited, made me feel loved and not abandoned. Not one person gave me a pity party. When you’re going through something like this, you do not need friends that criticize or want to marry their misery to yours. Mine were there to listen and talk. My friend Andrea Mellini spoke metaphorically about stagnant water, reminding me that a puddle can be a temporary nuisance or a breeding ground for diseases. “You got a minute to be like this, sis,” she said. “Just be mindful. Don’t live in this space.”

  * * *

  My exit from this woeful way station was abrupt and unanticipated, catching even me by surprise when it happened. It was daytime, though you would not have known it with the drapes pulled in my bedroom, and I was watching a talk show on TV. Liza Minnelli was being interviewed. I think she was promoting a return to the stage, but what I remember more clearly is the way she spoke about battling various personal demons as a precursor to this latest comeback of hers. She was raw, fragile, strong, and inspiring all at the same time.