I was 13, in the inaugural moments of my troubled teen era. It was one of what would be many trips an administrator’s office, at a time when people still had hope for me.
“How about trying to be less like this Mandi,” she says, hands pointed towards me like she was holding a small box, “and try to be more like that Mandy.” She pointed her boxed hands up towards the ceiling. She was gesturing towards the voice coming through the loudspeaker. The voice of Mandy Doyle.
It wasn’t the first time Mandy Doyle had been used as a point of contrast. Three years her junior, I began my trail behind her at Cherry Run Elementary. She was a generously blooming shrub. I was a constipated houseplant, trying with all my might to occasionally eek out a tiny bud. When they told me over and over about my potential – how I had so much of it, how I didn’t live up to it, how I was wasting it – she was what they meant. Mandy with a ‘y’ potentialed the shit out of her potential. Mandi with ‘i’ never did enough or did too much all wrong.
Jennifers, Lindseys, Jessicas, Megans – they were everywhere. But I had never come upon another kid with my name until Mandy Doyle. As an adopted, only child, I was quick to grab hold of even the tiniest spore of belonging, identification, similarity, anything to prove that I was real and supposed to be here. Seeing my own name on someone else made me feel a distanced kinship to her. And what better kin than a pretty, popular, peppy, overachiever. Mandy with a ‘y’ always did the right thing, always led the pack, and was always beaming with a smile.
Like my older namesake, I fared well academically. Where I failed, was in adult likability. Every quarter, my report cards glowed in all but one category: Exhibits self control. That glaring N – for ‘needs improvement’ – was so affixed to that line, it seemed holographic.
Doing well in school felt like an achievement with no rewards. But older Mandy always seemed as if she was in or had just completed a parade. I motivated myself with her as a North Star. Just keep trying and eventually, being good like her will make me good enough.
In second grade, I submitted a drawing for our elementary school yearbook and signed my name with a ‘y’ in hopes of being the better version Mandy. I was selected to introduce a famous children’s author when he visited our school. I initially wrote what I was going to say on a piece of paper. But then I remembered a time Mandy spoke in front of the school and she had read from notecards. When it came time to choose a band instrument, I followed her lead and picked clarinet, even though I wanted something bigger and louder like percussion or a brass horn. When in doubt, ‘y’ always seemed to be better than ‘i’.
I never wanted to be her. I wanted to be worthy like her. I wanted teachers and school staff and all of the adults telling us what to do to like me like they liked her. I never carried a sense of competition or bitterness, even when directly referred to as the lesser of us, because I was not in her league. She moved and lived in a world I could not access. She was an unattainable ideal.
Puberty came along with me when I rejoined her at Lake Braddock Secondary School where, from afar, she seemed to continue along her trajectory of perfection. I no longer found hope for myself in her. Hormones and parental suffocation turned my inner toiling of not good enough, try harder into a baggie-pants clad, bloodshot eyed expression of I dare you to tell me what to do.
I received my freshmen yearbook during my second stay in an adolescent psychiatric hospital. In the 90’s, if your parents didn’t like how you were acting, they carted you off to a hospital, treatment facility or wilderness camp where any teenage girl who talked back was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I flipped through the pages of our yearbook, landing on Mandy Doyle’s senior ad from her family where they listed all of the many people who were proud of her. Mandy with a ‘y’ had played the teenage girl game perfectly – she smiled, stayed covered up, achieved, and kept her suffering to herself. And everyone was so, so proud. I seemed to only make my family yell and cry.
Off Mandy Doyle went, out into the world to achieve. Where Mandi Pagliarini went from there is a much more complicated story for another day.
It’s a story I put down into a manuscript and batted around for a decade. Over the last year, I picked it back up, tweaking, finalizing, and shopping it around. I’ve been met with yesses. Yes, almost. Yes, but. Yes, but go be big first. Go be likable and followable. Go shine and sparkle and smile and be in all the clubs, get elected student council president, get on Homecoming court, be in National Honor Society, go get voted Leading Leader. Go and show us you can be more Mandy Doyle and less Mandi Pagliarini. Figurately speaking.
I hadn’t thought about Mandy for years. At least, I thought I hadn’t. It was only recently, when my kids were flipping through my elementary school yearbooks, when I saw the young 6th grade, SCA president, Mandy Doyle that it all clicked. Mandy Doyle was now Amanda Doyle, or ‘Sister’ as I had come to know her listening to the uber-popular podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, she co-hosts with her sister Glennon and sister-in-law, Abby Wambach.
I discovered my degrees of separation to Glennon Doyle soon after falling under the spell of her writing. She popped up on Facebook, in photos with her ex-husband Craig – long known as the hot older brother of my classmate, Nicole. But years and over 200 episodes of We Can Do Hard Things later, I hadn’t made the connection that her sister Amanda was the unattainable Better Mandy. Perhaps it should have been more obvious, but again, I’m no Mandy Doyle.
I can’t help but smile at the irony that at 42 years old, I continue to watch from afar as the one with the ‘y’ moves and lives in a world I don’t feel worthy of access. Decades later and I’m still trying to get the adults in the room to like me the way they like her. But she’s no longer Mandy, and neither am I. And if I’ve learned anything from being a We Can Do Hard Things listener, it’s that Amanda Doyle is no longer ignoring her own suffering in order to be a good girl. And I dare any one to tell her what to do.
Maybe the real irony is that Mandy with a ‘y’ has got a little Mandi with an ‘i’ in her now. Which I’m discovering might not be so bad after all.
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