Being Kendra (6 page)

I blamed Hank for all of our troubles, but in reality, it was the show that had wanted me to go to Philly. Hank had been telling me to stay in L.A., but the producers were really persuasive and in the end he went along with their suggestion. So Hank went to Philadelphia for the team and I went for the show, and everybody (me, baby Hank, the show) relied on Hank to stay on the Eagles the whole season. No one thought he would get cut—it never even crossed our minds—so that was a slap in the face when it happened.

So my husband was leaving me and I was in a panic at this point, with the show in even more of a panic. We were all at a crossroads—basically we couldn’t film anymore if I left Philly, since that was the only place set up for production. I would have happily moved back to L.A. but I had to stay in Philly (separated from my husband) because of the show. E! didn’t have the budget approved to follow us to Minnesota or L.A., nor did they have any filming permits, as those take several weeks to get. To set up a home for filming, they needed to install bright lights and shades and get the whole production crew there and arrange for them to stay in a hotel, not to mention work out paperwork, insurance, and everything else that goes with making a TV show. At best that would have taken a month. So even if I did decide to go to Minnesota, we wouldn’t have been able to film there immediately. None of this was my fault and I immaturely told E! they should have had plan B set up in advance, which they didn’t.

If I quit the show then I’d have been unemployed. That wouldn’t have bothered either of us before, but it was a wake-up call when the Eagles cut Hank. We realized we were a decision or so away from
both
being unemployed, homeless, and frankly on the verge of a separation, so we couldn’t take any chances. We both pushed forward with work because though we may have been oblivious to it before, we now knew our jobs were never guaranteed.

Life was hell. On TV nobody saw what really happened in Philly; you didn’t see me crying into my pillow or staring up at the ceiling all night instead of sleeping. They made it seem like everything was set up for us nice and easy, but that was hardly the case. On TV it looks like we flew to Philly and ended up in this nice penthouse. But that’s certainly not how it happened.

I spent a lot of time alone in Philadelphia with the baby after that, and while I may have thought I was making an effort to have friends and a life there, it just didn’t work. I knew I would be leaving soon, so subconsciously I hardly made an effort. Sadly that had been my mind-set for several years, since I never stayed in one location more than a couple of months at a time. I felt like an outcast, alone in a big city where I didn’t know anyone except for a digital Skype image of my husband a couple minutes per day.

I may have mentally been alone, but physically there were people coming in and out of my apartment all day. I still had a show to film, with or without my husband. Never mind the fact that I didn’t put a lot of effort into friend making; it was virtually impossible anyway given my schedule. We were in a mad scramble to make the show work, given the giant wrench that was just thrown into the overall plan and plot.

In order to make it through the day, I needed to enlist help to do the “dad/husband” things that I just wouldn’t be able to take care of while looking after Hank Jr. and working. We had the dog walkers, and my assistant, Eddie, came over every day (he lived in a hotel across the street) to wake me up and give me coffee and a breakfast burrito from a little café nearby. I don’t miss my Philadelphia situation overall, but if there’s anything I do miss about it it’s the burritos, the coffee, and, of course, the cheesesteaks. Something about a big city like that churns out amazingly greasy and delicious comfort foods.

The baby would wake up around sunrise and I’d feed him. As I woke up, the production team would start filtering into our apartment, setting up tripods and lights and wires, all while I’m trying to get Hank Jr. (oh, and myself too I guess) ready for the day. Then I would put the baby down for a nap, and while he was sleeping, we’d start to film the show. Until, of course, the baby woke up and I had to feed him lunch with the cameras on me. Then the baby went down for his nap again and I had to film; then he’d wake up and I would take him out to Penn’s Landing on the riverfront. He’d crawl on the grass and see ducks, and then I’d rush back to put him down for a nap. While he was napping, I’d do interviews and voice the narration part of the show. That would take us well into five
P.M.,
when he had to eat again. Finally the producers would put the cameras down, and I’d go and mix up his little food or get spaghetti and veggies. I’d blend his food, heat it up, change him, put him in a high chair, call Hank, arrange various things for the house and our life, work, film, and then try to get the baby down for the night, hopefully in the seven-to-eight-
P.M.
range. After that, for me it should have been pass-out time. But I barely had anything to eat myself because these days were never-ending, so I tried to have a late dinner. I call those days the three weeks of pure hell because this was my schedule for the most part while Hank was gone. At nine
P.M.
we’d Skype and that would be it for the day.

Ultimately, I decided neither Philly nor Minnesota was right for me and the baby—so we moved back to California.

Of course, the fact that I didn’t have a home to go back to in L.A. was just more great drama for the show, but for me it was just another sad reality of my life and my marriage. The show found a real estate agent who showed me this beautiful house that looked great on paper and I was like, “I want it.” It was supposed to be this beautiful house in Pasadena and I got there and I was like, “What is this?” It was three miles up a mountain and you had to drive up the side of a cliff to get to it. Once you got to the house, the last thing you wanted to do was drive back down that scary road, especially with a kid in the backseat.

A perfect fit, right there on my shoulder. We make each other relaxed.

So I started not wanting to leave the house. And I got it into my head that the house was haunted, so in addition to not wanting to leave, I also didn’t want to be there! I’d gone from feeling isolated in Philly to feeling isolated and trapped in Pasadena. I couldn’t take it anymore after more than three weeks, so I called Hank’s parents to help me with the baby—in-laws 911! They flew out for a few weeks and helped me with the baby while I did photo shoots and interviews and work for the show. I couldn’t do it all and raise the baby alone. I could feel myself unraveling.

I started to blame Hank, and our relationship began to deteriorate fast. I said, “How could you do this to me? You don’t even know where I’m at right now.” I felt like he had let us down again. He wasn’t involved in our day-to-day life and it was like he had checked out, at least in my mind. I felt us drifting farther and farther apart. Hank is a very caring, loving man, a good seed. If this is the kind of interaction
he
has with his family when he’s away for the season, I can only imagine what some of the bad seeds out there are like. I started to question his involvement and devotion to us. What kind of a father and husband is that? I didn’t want to be one of those “wives” who ended up on a reality show with other wives bitching about my lowlife, cheating, absent husband who’s on the road all year playing football. I knew deep down Hank was a good man put between a rock and a hard place, but I felt like he didn’t man up. Forget me; didn’t he want a better life for his son? I was so focused on and angry about things that had already happened and couldn’t be changed that I really started to lose it. You shouldn’t dwell on the past but I was focusing on what had happened over the last few months and it was causing me to freak out in the present. My past has always been a disaster. For me what works is looking forward, but I’m not always capable of doing that.

W
hen the house didn’t work out in Pasadena, I flew out to Minnesota with the baby to live with Hank for a couple weeks so we could try to be together. It was the holidays and I wanted to do everything possible to make sure we could at least have some family time even if the rest of the year had been anything but normal. We had a little Charlie Brown–type tree for Christmas and a lot of snow. We were dealing with a five-hundred-square-foot apartment and blizzard weather, but at least we were reunited as a family.

The place was roomy enough for Hank by himself, but add a wife and kid and things got cramped real fast. I quickly learned I couldn’t stay there full-time, there just wasn’t enough space, so I spent the next couple of weeks going back and forth between L.A. and Minnesota (Hank’s parents came up to Minnesota to help out and keep an eye on the baby since Hank was playing football) and moved us out of my Pasadena house and into a month-to-month apartment in Studio City—a place we’d call home until we bought our new house several months later. Finally, after trying to get our lives settled in California, I flew back to Minnesota for a three-week stay, possibly the longest three weeks of my life. That is when I lost my cool, to say the least.

I now understand what some moms go through on a daily basis when dad heads off to work. One day I found myself alone in the apartment with the baby during a blizzard while Hank was at practice. It was pretty bad out and I wasn’t going to risk driving anywhere with the baby in that weather. One day stuck in the apartment turned into two, which turned into three. I hadn’t showered in a while, hadn’t really seen daylight, and other than “goo-goo ga-ga” with Hank Jr., hadn’t really had much of a face-to-face conversation with anyone in the outside world. All of a sudden I started to lose it.

The room started to spin, my dreams and reality started to mix together. I wasn’t sure what day it was or what time it was, and I didn’t know whether I had eaten or what I had eaten. I could barely see five feet in front of me. I was pretty out of it. That is when I knew something terrible was about to happen. Thank God my son was safe. I’m not saying I was a danger to Hank Jr., but thank God he was sleeping quietly in his room away from my madness, because things were spiraling down very quickly. He is a heavy sleeper; he could sleep through a thunderstorm, a giant tractor trailer whizzing by, or in this case a parental meltdown of epic proportions.

It was around bedtime and I just went crazy. Something just snapped inside me and I ripped everything off the walls. I smashed everything, cleared off shelves and tables and shattered anything breakable. I had a sudden bout of depression and hate, and I just broke any object in plain sight. I started shaking. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was trying to wrap my hands around anything and break it. I threw plates and shattered them. I ripped up papers and bills and envelopes. Stuff on tables like forks, knives, glasses—I just picked them up and slammed them all. This went on for at least an hour, with occasional breathing breaks in the middle to catch my breath for a minute. But nothing could stop me.

I knew something bad was going on internally with me but I couldn’t control it. I was raging, and the more I raged, the heavier and more intense it got. I wasn’t stopping for anything or anyone. Of course, being alone (Hank Jr. was sleeping and daddy Hank wasn’t home yet), there wasn’t anyone or anything to stop me anyway. I was screaming and crying beyond what you could imagine. The neighbors, if they didn’t know me yet, certainly knew me now. I thought someone was going to call the cops; I was having my Britney moment. Apart from shaving my head and bashing in a window with an umbrella, it was pretty much as you would think. This was not the pretty blonde posing on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard with her family announcing the season premiere of her new show. I was an angry, depressed monster with no producers or editing to fix my flaws. I was crying uncontrollably. I just kept screaming, “Fuck! Fuck! I don’t deserve this shit!” I couldn’t think straight and I was ready to leave Hank. Not divorce; I will never divorce Hank. This was more of a “I’m going to get away and start a new life and you come when you’re ready.”

It was beyond bad. Looking back, I’m not embarrassed about it. I think it happens to a lot of moms. I’ve told this story to a few moms and they all look at me with sympathy because every one of them says, “Been there, done that.” I thought I was going crazy, but what I’ve been told is that I was actually perfectly sane. This happening to me showed me that everything in my brain was actually working well; it was a sign—get out of that apartment, get help, get away, and take care of yourself. It was a “fight or flight” situation, and after fighting it for the longest time, I was now ready to leave.

And I’m lucky the incident was interrupted by Hank.

Anxiety and depression, anger and fear, and just being overwhelmed—that moment showed up right when it needed to. I was feeling so much pressure and I had been bottling it all up. I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t pretend everything was okay anymore. When he got home from practice, he found me, and the apartment, in shambles. When Hank saw the state I was in (and the state of the apartment), he made the mistake of picking a fight instead of trying to console me. He looked right at me and asked, “Why did you trash the apartment? What’s wrong with you?” Little did he know . . .

Hank made a huge mistake; you don’t fight with a depressed person. Because we’d spent so much time apart, he wasn’t in tune with what was going on with me, and maybe it was my fault for not cluing him in. His lack of compassion got us into the biggest fight. He was yelling at me instead of trying to understand what I was going through. His screaming at me only enraged me even more—did he not know the hell I had been through the last couple of months? Not only from the roller coaster that is childbirth but the constant moving and being alone. Man alert: He was clueless. He should have picked up on the fact that I was nearing my breaking point, but he didn’t.

Our fighting escalated and Hank’s blood was boiling so much he lost consciousness and literally fainted, falling to the floor on top of the baby’s toys. He had a panic attack of his own from the stress and passed out. Ever seen a six-foot-four man fall over and thump to the ground? That scared the hell out of me! I knew I was in no shape to care for anyone, and if Hank (whom I had always thought was physically indestructible) was now down and out, we were all in big trouble. I looked at Hank for a second (he was unconscious for at least ten seconds; it was very frightening) and realized my fit was over and now we both needed to get our act together. I kicked him and yelled, “Get up, you can’t pass out now!” I think that was a wake-up call for the both of us that we just needed to breathe, chill out, go back home to California, and get a damn house. We couldn’t do this anymore. He spent the next hour cleaning up my mess. Two days later Hank booked me a one-way flight home. He understood why I had to leave and he said he would leave too if he was in my position.

Hank’s not the type to sit down and talk about this stuff all the time. So it had been building and he and I hadn’t dealt with it. He’s not a therapist. I had to realize that. He understood, he listened, and he digested it all
after
the fact, but he’s not going to ask me what I need to talk about every day. After that he never yelled at me.

Because of that night Hank decided he was going to quit playing football that season. He had the phone in his hand and was about to tell his coach. He was going to quit because he was so worried about me and my health, and I have to say even though I was angry as hell with him, the fact that he offered to do that showed me his true colors. I would never want him to give up his career though.

I realize now that a lot of my inner turmoil was guilt because of what I was doing with the baby—forcing Hank Jr. to stay in this tiny apartment because of the snow and my own issues of being scared to go out. Minnesota has one of the largest shopping malls in the world, but going to the Mall of America isn’t the smartest thing to do when you are famous. So I couldn’t just take the baby for an indoor stroll. I was forcing my child to have no life because of issues I was responsible for. I went crazy and I snapped. I had no friends and no life and that was rubbing off on the baby. What I wish is that someone had told me, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about the baby like that. Feed him, love him, keep him safe, and he’ll be just fine.” But by isolating myself, I didn’t even have that.

Since getting pregnant and then actually having a baby, my isolation had grown worse. I started to lose a lot of the friends I thought I had made over the last decade. Some stayed, but most just grew distant. So it wasn’t like I had this great support system to vent to. Of course I’d had relationships with people like Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt in the past, but they were really just roommates, not close friends. We shared a boyfriend, we shared the spotlight, but now that I’m a mom we’re all just in different places. I just changed. I think it’s something that just happens naturally when you become a mom. You just grow up. Someone like Holly has a different lifestyle from me. I love her but I don’t know the people she hangs out with—they are more on the party scene, and I’ve put those days behind me. We still talk (she always gave me amazing words of encouragement during
Dancing
with
the
Stars
and sent me fun little notes) but being a Vegas showgirl and constantly on the prowl for a new boyfriend . . . that’s her world, not mine. When it came to the baby, people like that just weren’t around. I was very alone.

After hitting my breaking point, I immediately flew back to L.A. and I gave Hank a deadline. If I didn’t have a house in three months, I was prepared to call it quits. I couldn’t do this anymore—the constant moving around and instability was too much. I told him, “I can’t live your life anymore. I’m not just a football wife.” After that he started moving quickly, because he knew I wasn’t fucking around.

Hank is the man in my life, and I think the man should step up and take care of things. Even though we make the same amount of money, I’m old-fashioned that way. He is the one who builds the nest. I’m the woman. I’m the one who raises the kid. He likes it that way too, and he chose that role. But that is why he let me down, because he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. If I had my way and we could have guaranteed security I’d quit working today and let Hank do it all. But we need the money.

So I was doing my job and he wasn’t doing his job. I knew we weren’t done as a couple, but it had been a tense couple of months, so I had to threaten him and let him know that part of us being a family was starting a life together in a home. Without that, we were incomplete. If we couldn’t have afforded one or were unemployed or down and out then our options would have been different. But working our asses off had given us the ability to have a secure, stable place to live. We (and by “we” I mean Hank) just hadn’t done anything about it. The amount of pressure that was on us at such a young age—I was twenty-five and he was twenty-eight—was too much. It’s a lot of pressure and we’ve never done any of this before. Not only being in a marriage but also both working and being parents.

I’m having fun with it now, thankfully. Once you get through the tough parts parenthood is obviously extremely rewarding. Hank and I have figured out our lives and roles more, and it doesn’t hurt having the off-season, when we are all together and Hank’s not traveling the country and playing football. I feel much more secure in our relationship and that we’re providing stability for baby Hank. We opened up an account for baby Hank a long time ago so that every day we are working for him, his security and college. We want to make sure that he’s never moving around from city to city searching for work and a home like we did. Hank is going to hopefully grow up enjoying the fruits of our labors. I’m not a person who likes glamorous stuff so our money’s not going to get tied up in Chanel bags and Tiffany necklaces. I look at life before glam and I want to make sure that Hank Jr. is secure. I’ve been on TV nine seasons; I know I deserve my home. I don’t need a mansion but I do need a home. Doesn’t everyone?

At one point or another, we had seen what a mess we were in aspects of our life, financially, health-wise, emotionally, and physically. We spent a lot of time and effort getting all that under control, but one thing we still needed to figure out was taking care of our finances. We were clueless.

I got to the Playboy Mansion at eighteen years old. I was fresh out of high school, and I had no idea what real life was like. Real life, bills, taxes—I just thought you lived day to day and things didn’t really affect you. I knew a little about taxes, but I thought they were just something you tack on to the end of a meal or a purchase. I thought I could get away without acknowledging it for a while. I mean, it’s not like I was going to get into trouble because I didn’t pay taxes! I didn’t think I would. But because of that attitude, taxes and finances became one of the biggest stresses of my life in the last decade. I was so delinquent in paying taxes and simple bills that cleaning up finances has been a several-year process. I’ve since received hundreds of letters, and though I’ve taken care of most of it, I still to this day get notices from places that have tracked me down saying I owe them money. They’re probably right. I really don’t know what I spent my money on because I never kept track. So at this point, I don’t even question it. If they say I bought something in 2002, I probably did.

My credit score was so bad because I was never responsible enough to pay anything. And while I know I’m fully to blame, it’s not something even if I was responsible I’d have been able to keep track of. The amount of residences I’ve had since leaving home, whether it was the mansion or Philadelphia or Minnesota or Indianapolis or one of the more than five cities in California I’ve lived in—my bills and taxes were sent all over. The minute I changed my address from one town to the next, I was off to a new one. Bills never caught up to me, and I was of the mind-set that it would all just go away. If the bills from L.A. didn’t reach me in Philadelphia, and my bills from Indianapolis didn’t follow me to Minnesota, it was like they never existed. Or at least in my head they never existed. In reality, they did.