Sitting on a tour bus traveling the country for the Brad Paisley tour, Kellie Pickler is a long way from Albemarle.

“My life has definitely done a 180,” she said. “It's not every day I get to sit on my toilet and have people watching me with cameras.”

Pickler talked exclusively to WCNC on her very own tour bus. (Click here for raw video and photos from back stage) Our cameras were along for the ride as she sat in her small bathroom talking about how her life has changed.

The small town girl - who got everyone in her hometown to ‘Pick Pickler’ on ‘American Idol’ - is now on the road opening for Brad Paisley.

Pickler said it’s hard leaving her hometown friends for the bright lights of Nashville, where she currently lives.

It was so hard for Pickler to talk about the Albemarle native she calls the big sister she never had that her tour manager wanted to stop the interview as tears streamed down her cheeks. Pickler politely asked him to leave. “Can you let us talk?”

And Pickler did want to talk - about everything - candidly. She even talked about her plastic surgery rumors.

“Oh my boobs?” Pickler said. “I don't care. You know what? The most important thing is you're happy with what you see when you look in the mirror.”

And the 20-year-old said she is happy with herself. “You just have to brush off the people that criticize you and put you down because it’s not really about this (gesture), it’s about what’s in here (points to her heart).”

“And your real friends are gonna to love you no matter what you look like whether you're a negative A cup or a triple D. They're gonna love you just because you're you,” Pickler said.

In true Pickler fashion, she said what was on her mind, even when we talked about dating. “Some of the most attractive guys are ugly as soon as their mouths open.”

In July 2006 while a co-host on ‘The View’, Pickler blushed and was all smiles when Barbara Walters asked about her boyfriend.

“We actually dated before I auditioned for ‘Idol’ and we took a little bit of a break so we could kind of try to figure out what we were going to do with our lives and we just got reunited,” Pickler said on the show.

Now she said she’s single.

“As far as the love life goes, I'm not in any serious relationship or anything,” she said.

But she admitted to a flirtation with a Nashville hockey player. “Everyone always says we're the hockey-tonk hook up in Nashville. It’s kind of cute.”

Pickler said it started with dinner and they’ve been hanging out ever since.

“He has introduced me to so many different types of food,” Pickler said. “I’ve been eating raw fish. It’s kind of weird. I ate eel the other day.”

But she's far from settling down.

“If it’s meant to be then it will happen,” she said. “And if not then I'll just be an old hag with a bunch of cats.”

All kidding aside Pickler said she does want a family someday.

Pickler was abandoned when she was young and said she has no idea where her mother is now. “I don't have contact with her.”

Does she want to know?

“It's kind of like there’s been a huge bridge that’s been burned you know and sometimes it's kind of hard to repair so I don't know what I'd say. I don't know what I'd do.”

Her top 25 single “I Wonder” is about her mom.

“I hope you guys like this song,” Pickler told the crowd during a May 5 concert. “It’s very personal.”

The lyrics say it all. “Did you think I didn't need you here? To hold my hand, to dry my tears. Did you even miss me through the years at all?”

“We all go through obstacles in life but at the end we make it,” Pickler said.

The last line of the song talks about her moving to Tennessee.

“It just kind of reinforces that you know this is what I've wanted to do my whole life and now I'm doing it regardless of if I had you there to help and support me,” Pickler said.

She doesn’t have the support of her father either, who has been in and out of prison.

Pickler is a beauty school drop out and then tried nursing. “I even tried paralegal for crying out loud. I thought well maybe I could help my dad out a little bit! I'm kidding dad.”

Pickler’s grandmother helped raise her and died before her ‘American Idol’ success. “I want her to be tangible. “I want to hold her. I want her to hold me. It's hard.”

Pickler says she's learned to rely on herself and her adopted family in Albemarle. “I've learned that blood doesn't make you family.

Where she came from is so much a part of where she's going. “I just feel like finally my dreams are coming true.”