Christina Applegate talks about her life, career and battle with MS so far in her memoir, You are the one with the sad eyespublished on Tuesday. One of the memoir’s revelations is that she had an abortion when she was 19 in the midst of an abusive relationship
“In late April 1991, I became pregnant,” she wrote in her diary. Entertainment Weekly. “I want to distance myself from what happened, but it’s all recorded in my diary. There are moments in my life that are too painful to force narrative or meaning, so I’ll let my voice from behind do the talking.”
Her memoir includes excerpts from old diaries, one of which reportedly details the moment she learned she was six-and-a-half weeks pregnant at the time. “Two days before I found out, I was in a car accident on my way to the gynecologist. My car didn’t make it, but fortunately I did,” she wrote. Electronic warfare. “I knew I was pregnant. I couldn’t understand why, even though I was watching my food, I still felt fat. I couldn’t understand why sex made me feel sick and I cried at the drop of a hat. Now I know. I’ve always felt that if I ever got pregnant when I knew it was the wrong time, I would have no problem having an abortion. ‘Oh, whatever, he’s not even a baby yet.’ This is bulls, this incredible creature. He makes me feel complete and safe…”
“My boyfriend said I was a disgusting, self-obsessed fat pig with an eating disorder today (not in so many words). That opened my eyes so much. … I don’t really understand my relationship anymore. It’s not good. Sometimes I don’t think it’s worth it. … I feel like I’ve lost myself somewhere, and I can’t find it for the life of me,” Applegate wrote of her boyfriend about their emotionally abusive relationship.
“His family will hate me when they find out I killed one of their family members because they don’t believe in it. But I can’t have this baby because I have work to do to entertain this damn world. Besides, I can’t… now,” she wrote about having an abortion.
In a blog post dated June 13, 1991, Applegate reportedly wrote: “It’s over.” Then she adds, “I feel fine. Just kind of confused. It doesn’t give me time to realize what I’ve done. Which is probably for the best now.”
She continues, “I was looking at what I wrote yesterday and I just had to laugh. My emotions were so distorted (I really don’t feel that way. Honestly, I think when you’re pregnant you tend to feel that way about the male figure in your life). My life is so wild. I could seriously write a book. I guess that’s the kind of thing it is.”
In addition to her early life and career, Applegate also wrote about her MS diagnosis and the “agonizing agony” of the disease in her memoir. In 2021, Applegate publicly revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which the National Multiple Sclerosis Society describes as “an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and the body.”
“I wish I could say I was a miracle,” Applegate wrote in her memoir. New York Post. “Although it’s very hard to believe most days, in any case, I don’t want to downplay what this disease does to a person’s body and soul.”
In her memoir, Applegate shares the difficulties she faces through simple movements: “When I wake up, I often can’t move my arms far enough to pick up my cup of water from my bed or my phone from its charger. My stomach often slows to a halt, causing me to regularly rush to the emergency room in agony.”
Looking at the first signs of MS, which I learned while filming the final season of the Netflix hit Dead to meApplegate recalled asking her doctor why her toes were twitching, writing, “I’ll never forget the look he gave me.” After numbness crept into her limbs, she was tested. Brain scan results showed 30 lesions on its surface and a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was made.
“I remember trying to get down the stairs in my house at six in the morning, and I could only get to the ninth staircase,” she recalled while filming at the time.
She also revealed that she had to wear adult diapers due to “incontinence issues” due to the illness.
Her current treatment plan consists of getting steroid injections every six months to slow the disease. However, the medications have side effects, including eliminating her B cells, leaving her vulnerable to infections, and weight gain.
The weight gain made her receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame bittersweet, as Applegate wrote: “Once people were staring at my breasts; then they were staring at my broken foot. But now I realize they were staring not just because I was disabled; they were staring because I was fat, an unacceptable fate for women in Hollywood forever.”
“I didn’t look in the mirror for a year,” wrote Applegate, who has been open about her struggles with an eating disorder in the past. She eventually dropped more than 50 pounds after going on a liquid diet to manage her stomach issues.
per Los Angeles TimesApplegate also wrote about her father leaving the family when she was a young child and her mother’s struggles with drug and alcohol abuse. She also reveals that at the age of five, her “carer” forced her to perform oral sex on her.
In general, Applegate writes in her memoirs frankly and without embellishment. “This book is not cathartic for me — let’s just go there,” Applegate said He told the Los Angeles Times From her diary. “I just needed to get this crap out somewhere. It’s like you guys are now my therapists in the world.”
