Silence- Adopted by Demi Lovato

Ellen, part 1

CHAPTER 23

    Mac's POV  

     Me and Demi just arrived at the building where Ellen is filmed. It's crazy here. Everyone is running around, and it's really loud. Me and Demi are sharing a dressing room. It's really nice, a bunch of juice boxes for me and soda for Demi. A hair and makeup team came in. Demi insisted on doing my makeup. I'm glad she did. The team is really nice, but I don't like people who I don't know touching me. Soon, it was time to go on. Demi was going on alone at first. Ellen wanted to talk to her about her recovery, I don't know what that ment, but i'm assuming it has something to do with battle scars. Then, after a commercial break Demi would come out with me. I'm really nervous. I keep reminding myself of what Demi said to me this morning. To not care what anyone else thinks. But it's really hard. 

     Demi's POV  

    "After a highly public breakdown our next guest is back on top with a highly anticipated CD called 'Unbroken' Which is in stores today! Please welcome the very courageous Demi Lovato." Ellen introduced me. Soon the music cue started and I walked onto the set. Everyone in the audience was clapping and I saw a lot of girls with my face on their shirts. That always makes me smile. I walked up to Ellen and hugged her.

       "Hi Demi!" She said. "Heeey!" I said laughing. "How are ya?" "I'm good how are you?" I replied. "I'm good thanks. So you are, let me just started with this. You're how old eighteen?" Ellen asked. "Yes." "And you have gone through a lot of stuff recently and I have to say for a nineteen year old person who's gone through this much most people are encouraged to just try to make it go away and make excuses and not talk about it and not be honest about what goes on and I think it helps to talk about it. I don't think it helps at all to shove it away and not talk about it. So thank you for being courageous thank you for talking about it because it helps other girls." The audience started to clap and all I could do was smile. Once the applause died down Ellen spoke again. "I think if you can help people in this business that's the most important thing we can do. To not just entertain, to say here's something I learned and maybe I can help other girls from not going through the same thing." I nodded and said "Right." "So you had a, was it called a breakdown? Meltdown? What happened?" Ellen asked. "It was called a mess." I laughed. "Uhm I don't really know what to call it but I basically yeah you could call it a breakdown, a meltdown. I went form being at the highlight of my career, having a movie just coming out,  and being on this tour and having so much success. So many things were going great in my life and then all of a sudden, uhm, my personal life just went down at crazy speeds. I just had a negative breakdown and it changed my life forever but i'm glad that it did because if I had never gone into treatment I don't know if one, I would even be sitting here today, or two, if I would even be alive today." I said. "So, you've been here a couple of times and I know you from being on the show but I don't really read those magazines I don't pay attention. So I don't know what happened. I know because you're here and we're gonna talk about it and I heard a little bit... So you had uh, can we talk about what you went in for?"  I laughed nervously. "Yeah haha"  "Okay so you were bulimic? And anorexic or just bulimic?"  She asked. "Well they called it anorexia binge/purge type. So it was technically both. In a way I was anorexic. I had come on the show and talked about bullying before, and I wanted so badly to speak about how much it had affected me but I couldn't really say how much it had affected me because I wasn't even through with the issues that it had caused." "So that started the cutting?" I nodded. "Right." "Because you felt so badly about yourself?" "Right, I think that years of abuse in school and so many things were said to me that just haunted me everyday, and I went from having all of these friends to none. And that's the effect that bullying can have on you and that's why i'm so adamant and outspoken about hwy its so important to get the awareness out there that teen bullying can cause these issues. I struggled with cutting, anorexia, and basically bulimia." "Now were you also drinking or doing drugs or anything like that?" I looked down and tried to figure out how to word it right. " I would be lying to you if I told you I never experimented or self-medicated with drugs and alcohol." Ellen nodded. "And people around you must have seen this going on. Everyone just tried to prop you up and put you on stage so that everybody was making money. I mean obviously it was a brave thing to go into treatment, because you were making money for a lot of people. And yet you inside were,  a mess." I nodded. "It was really difficult because on one side I had my family and my closest friends telling me, 'You need to go into treatment.' and then I had the pressures of some people who didn't really care. And lucky those people are out of my life. Like those people are nowhere, I don't speak to them they're out of my life. I am in such a good place now, that I can definitely weed out those people. My health and my recovery comes first. And everyone on my team knows that." "Right right. Well that's very mature of you to recognize that. Now obviously a lot of young girls look up to you and seeing what you went through and that may be stuff they're going through right now." I nodded. "Yeah." "How can you, in a quick soundbite, talk to those girls and give advice to them?" "Well one of the reasons why I became so outspoken about bullying and I decided to come out of treatment and talk about my issues is because when I grew up, and I was dealing with the pressures of being thin, it was the time when the tabloids when very very skinny girls were on the cover of magazines and that's what I was looking up to. So that's what I had to idolize, and I don't want that for young girls to idolize." The audience started clapping, Ellen started to clap too. Once it died down I spoke again. "I had no one to look at and say, 'You know what? Maybe this is unhealthy, maybe starving myself isn't the answer. So I want to be that, for a 13 year old at home deciding weather or not to eat dinner, or an 18 year old girl deciding weather or not to keep her breakfast down. There needs to be a role model out there, and for the first time in my life I actually feel like one." I finished with a smile. The audience started to clap wildly. Ellen looked at the camera. "Well we'll be right back with Demi and stay tuned, because after the break she's going to reveal some HUGE news!" Music started playing in the backround and a producers yelled "Clear!" Ellen leaned over to me, "That was great! So you go backstage and wait with Mac, the commercial is two minutes long so i'll play your cue and then you can walk out with Mac!" I nodded and got up to go backstage.