What you are about to read is admittedly very different from the other nineteen interviews I conducted with this season’s Survivor contestants. Nearly half of my conversation with Missy Byrd was about her life thus far. And it’s simply because I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. After an extremely taxing, confounding, and unbelievable series of events, Missy comes to the island by way of her “Oprah year.” She brings with her a militaristic training coupled with a tranquil personality. And she’s eager to prove she’s a survivor, in every sense of the word.

Read on for my chat with Missy, and make sure to check in with Parade.com every day for interviews with this season’s contestants and other on-set tidbits. Survivor: Island of the Idols premieres on September 25 with a special 90-minute premiere on CBS.

Tell me about yourself.

I’m 24 years old from Georgia. I joined the military when I was 18 and went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. From there, I went to Seattle. While I was at the Academy, I had a brain tumor. It was wild. I was playing basketball for the Academy, the D1 dream experience. All of a sudden, my hormones start going crazy. I don’t really understand why. I was having mood swings, lost my period for a year, and started to lactate. I asked myself, “Your momma called you crazy. Are you crazy?”

I went to the doctor, who said, “You’re an athlete. You run every day, and you work out at elevation, so it makes sense for you to lose your period for a short amount of time.” And I was like, “Cool, doc. But ‘short amount of time’ isn’t fourteen months.” He said it was normal, which I knew was bull [expletive]. The lactating should have probably tipped me off. But I’m super clumsy and I bump into a lot of things. So I would go to practice and just think I spilled my water. It got progressively worse as my hormones kept elevating. I was pregnant for nine months with a tumor. My brain tricked my body into being pregnant.

I can’t even imagine what that process was like.

In those nine months, my entire life changed. My dad passed as the hormones increased. I can’t show any type of emotion. I’m developing a stutter. It got to the point where I couldn’t stay at the Academy because you can’t be an officer and be crazy. They wanted to get the rest of their time out of me, so they sent me to Seattle. So now I’m checking in as enlisted, complete 180. I got hazed the entire time because they knew I had to leave the officer program. That happened for two years. But while I was in Seattle, I got to talk to the doctor and told her about my symptoms. Being at the Academy is like the military’s Yale, so at first, the doctor thought I was just overworked. She pricked my finger, and the normal hormone level should be between 12 and 20 something. Mine was 134.

I got an MRI done and spent the weekend trying to figure out if I’m dying. On Monday, I found out the tumor wasn’t cancerous. She figured out I was low on dopamine, which I thought was pretty dope. (Laughs.) I lacked happiness, which made sense after my dad passed and I left the Academy. She gave me some vitamins, and day by day, I was feeling a little better. Then all of a sudden, my period comes back. It’s the worst one I ever felt. I couldn’t walk or talk. But it meant my body was beginning to process the way it should again. After that, I slowly realized the difference between the two people I was. It was nice to have the validation, but it sucked because I didn’t get to graduate with my class at the Academy that I worked for four years to do. And my graduation year got to meet the Obamas, which would have been amazing if I was there. I got to realize, “You weren’t crazy. You weren’t rejected. You were sick.”

So after all that, what led you here?

After everything was done, I was like, “[expletive] it. Let me make a list of everything that, had I died, I would never have done.” I wrote down things like “Beyonce tickets” and “Buy a jeep.” And I wrote, “Apply for Survivor.” All of a sudden, these things started to fall into place. I got out of the military and finished my enlisted years. The first thing I did was buy Beyonce tickets because I could have died without ever hearing that angel’s voice in real life. The next day after making the list, her tour tickets went on sale. Then I decided to do a road trip across the country after the concert, from Georgia back up to Seattle. While I was In Georgia, I got to check up on my family and be like, “Not crazy, almost died. I’m going to leave again and experience all the crap I almost missed out on.”

The road trip was super cool. Along the way, I stopped in Colorado and checked in with the people who rejected me before. I had hundreds of lunches with all of these people because it was important for me to look you in the eye and say, “I don’t know what you experienced with Tumor Missy, but this is me.” A lot of my memory was also like Swiss cheese because of the trauma. I got back up to Seattle and did the same thing to find out why all those people who hazed me were so mean. I was getting ready to leave, not sure where I wanted to go. I thought, “This is your Oprah year. Take a journey, eat all the bread, drink all the wine. Do whatever you want; there are no rules for this entire year. Just go and worry about it later.”

What made you stay in Seattle?

I was a good kid growing up because I didn’t have time to do bad things. I didn’t have time to do drugs and alcohol, because if I don’t go to school, I don’t get a scholarship and we can’t afford college. I was 21 at this point and had heard of cannabis, weed, devil’s parsley. I thought, “This is your Oprah year; take a hit.” As soon as I do it, I have this epiphany about building an app. When I had my tumor, I stopped connecting with the world. I don’t know how to tweet, post a picture, or use hashtags. I asked myself, “How do you have an idea for an app when you don’t even know how to send a Facebook message?” I’m technically a veteran now, and I realize there are associations to get help with this. I find a veterans’ association and tell them I have an idea. I gave them my first informal pitch, and they told me it was a solid idea and to apply for a grant. A few weeks later, I win a $1500 grant for office space in Seattle, right next to the Space Needle. I had a lab just to play in. I was enjoying the life I damn near didn’t have.

How did applying for Survivor end up on your list?

I’ve always wanted to, but for whatever reason, I put it off every year of college. But one night, I had a dream and thought, “That can be my audition tape. It’s wild enough to be noticed.” I still didn’t know how to do technology, so I got a friend to record it. I taped it, sent it the next day, and got a call the day after that. Now I’m in Fiji.

What do you think people are going to perceive you as?

I can relate to a lot of different people. The military puts you in contact with a lot of different age groups. There can be a 40-year-old with the same rank as you, and you need to learn how to work with them. Same thing with ethnicity and religion. There are a lot of people whose ideals I don’t agree with, but I still need to work with them or we’ll be in trouble. Socially, I think I’ll be decently dope. I want to play like a Boston Rob. I’ll be cool to your face, but in the confessionals, I’ll light your ass up.

I feel like I’ve lived the life of eight people. Everything I went through is super heavy. I have enough stories to fill a lifetime of sitting and talking. I would love to save my tumor until the Final Three and hit the jury with it.

What do you desire in an alliance partner?

I like to be in charge. The military tries to find leaders. At the same time, I don’t want to be driving. Then I’ll get blamed for voting people out. I want some people that I want to manipulate. While they’re driving, I’m whispering sweet nothings in their ears. My ideal game would be to get up every morning, have some coffee, and talk about the others. By the end of Day 2, in their head, they’re thinking about getting the others out. I’m trying to find a delicate balance between making sure they do what I want, but not letting them know it’s me who’s pulling the strings.

When your tribe visits Tribal Council, would you rather vote on strength or loyalty?

Statistically speaking, a lot of people from a decimated tribe premerge will make it to the Final Three because of their bonds. It would Tbe based on vibes, who I know I can either manipulate or trusts me more than I should. If it’s someone strong who has to leave, I’m sorry. Your game’s over.

You wrote in your bio about how you’re inspired by the people who “broke the mold” of being black in America.

Statistically, you usually have one token black girl on Survivor. Which is really shitty. You have all these other white archetypes, and then you have one black guy and one black girl. It’s like Noah’s ark. How do you expect me, the one black girl, to be all these attributes that get spread out among five to ten white people? In my life, I’ve always been what I like to call “the only.” The only black person. It’s a heavy thing to put on one person. I don’t want to take that on in Survivor. J’Tia may have been a little crazy, but that doesn’t represent all black people. Tasha got to win the necklace more than any other black woman. Will I do that? I don’t know; I’m not Tasha. Michaela is a time bomb. I don’t know if I will be. Even if I am, that doesn’t mean it’s all black people. I want to make sure that’s a point.

If you could bring one celebrity or fictional character out as your loved one, who would you pick?

I would for sure ask Oprah. She broke the mold. When people don’t have to say your last name, you have arrived. But she’s booked for decades. Maybe Gayle. (Laughs.) I give it all to Oprah as to why I’m in Fiji right now talking with Mike Bloom at a table. It’s because I thought I could have an Oprah year. I’m sure whatever Oprah would have to say would light my fire.

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