Chap­ter 27 describes a time in my life when I felt like I was stand­ing on the edge of a cliff, look­ing into an abyss. After shav­ing my head, I went to Bryan’s apart­ment in Los Ange­les, where I was greet­ed by his two ex-girl­friends and my moth­er. My moth­er bare­ly acknowl­edged me, and I felt invis­i­ble to her, like my appear­ance was all that mat­tered. It was an extreme­ly painful reminder that the world often cares more about phys­i­cal appear­ance than the inner strug­gles some­one is going through. I had been going through so much emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly, but all that mat­tered to those around me was how I looked. It was a harsh real­i­ty check about the super­fi­cial­i­ty of how peo­ple, includ­ing my fam­i­ly, were view­ing me dur­ing one of the most dif­fi­cult times of my life.

In that win­ter, I was advised to enter rehab to help regain cus­tody of my chil­dren, even though I felt like my emo­tion­al and grief issues were the real prob­lems. I knew deep down that I wasn’t strug­gling with sub­stance abuse, but I fol­lowed the advice and entered rehab any­way. Upon arrival, my father was there, sit­ting across from me, telling me I was a “dis­grace.” Look­ing back, I wish I had reached out for sup­port, but I was so over­whelmed with shame and embar­rass­ment. His words stung, espe­cial­ly since he had been such a crit­i­cal part of the envi­ron­ment that led to my break­down. I had no one to turn to, and I felt com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed. Still, rehab marked the begin­ning of the heal­ing process, and while it was a dark time, I was deter­mined to make the best of it.

Once I was out of rehab, I man­aged to gain tem­po­rary joint cus­tody of my chil­dren, thanks to a ded­i­cat­ed lawyer who fought for me. How­ev­er, the ongo­ing cus­tody bat­tle with Kevin con­tin­ued to eat away at me. Dur­ing this peri­od, my album Black­out, which I was incred­i­bly proud of, was released in late 2007. I had hoped that it would be a turn­ing point in my career, but I was pres­sured to per­form “Gimme More” at the VMAs to help pro­mote the album. The only prob­lem was that I wasn’t okay, despite what every­one else thought. Back­stage at the VMAs, every­thing was going wrong, from issues with my cos­tume to prob­lems with my hair exten­sions. I hadn’t slept the night before, and I felt dizzy. The pres­sure to look per­fect, espe­cial­ly after just hav­ing my sec­ond baby, was over­whelm­ing. I was expect­ed to look flaw­less onstage, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I could feel the pan­ic set­ting in, and I was not pre­pared for what was com­ing.

When I ran into Justin back­stage, I couldn’t help but com­pare myself to him. He was doing great—on top of the world, con­fi­dent, and at ease. I, on the oth­er hand, was bat­tling pan­ic attacks and self-doubt. I was ful­ly aware of how much I had strug­gled, and it was painful to see some­one who seemed to have every­thing togeth­er while I was fight­ing to just make it through the night. When I final­ly per­formed, it was clear that I was nowhere near my best. The per­for­mance was not my finest moment, but as a per­former, every­one has off nights. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, mine was on one of the biggest stages, in front of mil­lions of view­ers, and the con­se­quences were harsh. After the show, the media wast­ed no time in tear­ing me apart. They ridiculed my per­for­mance, crit­i­cized my body, and even called my pub­lic break­down a “train wreck.” I didn’t hear Sarah Silverman’s roast at the time, but I lat­er learned she mocked me for every­thing I had worked so hard for. At that moment, I felt com­plete­ly defeat­ed. It was a tough blow, and the media’s response only inten­si­fied the feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy that I was already bat­tling.