In honour of the reality show’s upcoming 10th anniversary, Khloé Kardashian penned a first-person essay for Glamour, reflecting on the highs and lows of their reality TV world.
Of how the show came about, Khloé, 33, admits that she and Kourtney, 37, resisted the idea at first.
“At my mum’s house, we’d always have these big family dinners,” she said. “Ryan Seacrest came to one and was like, ‘You guys are crazy. You need to be on TV.’ My mum [Kris Jenner] and my sister Kim wanted to do the show, but Kourtney and I were really against it.”
“We were like, ‘No — we love our little life. We love what we’re doing,’ ” she continued. “But Ryan said, ‘We need the whole family or nobody at all.’ So my mum kind of sold it to us as a great commercial for our stores. We were like, ‘Ugh, fine.’ I remember we found two girls who worked across the street from us and asked them to run Dash and Smooch for three days while we shot.”
Now, of course, their lives have evolved beyond recognition.
“We film six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day, every single day,” Khloé said. “When you compile that much footage into 13 or 14 44-minute episodes, you can find a lot of drama.”
“Not every episode is juicy to us; it’s only juicy to the audience,” she continued, admitting that sister Kim’s October 2016 Paris heist at gunpoint and ex-stepfather Caitlyn Jenner‘s 2015 transition are two major moments she wishes hadn’t been covered on the show.
“Things like Kim’s robbery or Caitlyn’s transition? That’s the kind of stuff we wish we had never filmed,” she said. “We aren’t ever like, ‘Oooh! Let’s do this for season nine.’ ”
“That’s the sad thing,” she added. “We can’t deal with things in a normal period, like normal people. We have to kind of brush ourselves off and move on.”
“This is our life, and these are the things that happen,” she went on. “And it’s funny — when we decide not to shoot things, people feel slighted. But when we film too much, they’re like, ‘Oh, you never should have filmed that.’ It’s a catch-22.”
Khloé’s 2007 DUI — for which she spent less than three hours in jail after turning herself in — is another low point.
“That’s one of those times you wish you didn’t have cameras on you,” she admitted. “It was more embarrassing than anything else. I mean, I could have hurt or killed someone. But, you know, that happened. And I dealt with it. And it will never happen again.”
In 2014, after she filed for divorce from Lamar Odom for the first time, Khloé struggled with the heightened media scrutiny.
“That was a really, really hard time for me,” she recalled. “It was the first time I had received really negative attention. I’ve never been a party girl, but [drinking] is something I turned to. I was probably drunk while we were filming season 9.”
Looking back, Khloé admits the Kardashians “never could have fathomed the longevity of the show” as they head into season 14.
“When it comes to our drama, we are a large, blended family,” she said. “If you put a microscope over any family for 10 years, you’re bound to find cracks in the foundation. That’s just the name of the game, and we’re strong enough to endure it.”
“We are by nature vulnerable and open people,” she added. “And I think it’s a gift to be that way. I know a lot of people who are superb actors, who could act the f— out of a role, but they could never be themselves in front of a camera — it would be too much to have people tear them apart or judge them. I totally get that, but this is what we do. And we do it together. This is what we’ve chosen, and we’ve chosen to be as raw and honest as we can.”
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians 10th Anniversary special premieres Sept. 24, and season 14 premieres Oct. 1, both at 9 p.m. ET on E!
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.