Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(44)

Now when I need someone, it is Shana I go to for comfort.

The last time I was really upset, she somehow had a sixth sense something was wrong and called me first.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You haven’t posted anything on Instagram for a couple of days.”

When I got done telling her what had happened, she asked me if I had told Molly or Karen yet.

“No.”

“Have you told Simone?” she asked.

“I don’t know that anyone can help me with this,” I told her.

“I agree,” Shana said. “Let’s just keep this between us.” My sister was showing up for me, and I was happy to have her.





“I think I’ve figured some stuff out,” I told Dan, who sat across from me as I peeled the orange he’d handed me, the way a normal adult person would—without juice squirting into my eyes or Dan’s, without stabbing the orange with my fingernails, without acting like a gorilla.

After eight months of cultivating self-awareness and some considerable self-reflection, I realized I had arranged my life so that people would always have to know where I was. Whether I was getting on a plane or getting into a car, there were always people picking me up and dropping me off and checking to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. None of my TV shows and stand-up shows and books could happen without me, so all of the people who worked on those things depended on me. Without me, everyone else wouldn’t be in the building. I had created a life in which my clothes were chosen for me, my time was scheduled for me, my hair and makeup were done daily. I had regressed into childlike behavior after positioning myself at the center of everyone’s universe, so that, finally, everyone had to know where I was, and if anything happened to me, it would all come to an end. I had created a life in which I was finally being pampered—or parented.

    I remember the feeling I had when I was walking to the set to do one of the very first episodes of Chelsea Lately, and I heard my stage manager on his walkie-talkie say, “She’s walking.” I loved that there was a coordinated effort to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. I remember being backstage at Radio City Music Hall and hearing the stage manager say, “She’s ready to start the show. I’m walking her to stage.” I remember one of my attorneys telling me the E! network was thinking about taking out an insurance policy on me, in case I was injured during one of my ski trips—because, well, I did get injured. Instead of feeling like livestock, I felt like I mattered. My parents would never have thought about doing such a thing—insuring me. Years and years of being looked after by teams of people wherever I went meant that I was finally important.

“That’s pretty big,” Dan told me.

“This is why I’ve carved out an existence where most people involved in my life are being paid to take care of me. I created a structure that I could inhabit, that would house my need for constant chaos. I could surround myself with chaos, while always remaining in charge of it. Consistency was unfamiliar territory—therefore dangerous—so if things were going well for too long or became predictable, my impulse would be to disrupt—move on and out. Make noise.”

    Dysfunction was my junction. Function felt off, like water in my ears.

“You were doing all of this unconsciously,” Dan said.

“Why do people say ‘unconsciously’? Isn’t it ‘subconsciously’?” I asked him. “?‘Unconsciously’ implies that you’re not even awake. Doing something without thinking—isn’t that ‘subconsciously’? Being awake and not thinking?”

“Yes, actually. I suppose that’s true, but people just choose to use ‘unconscious’ more.”

“Why, though?” I asked as I neatly stacked the orange peels on a tissue in my lap.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged.

“Sorry, I get into word arguments a lot. Mostly with myself. Well, that’s not true. I correct people all the time. I also need to stop doing that. Like when people say ‘anyways.’ The word is ‘anyway.’ ‘Anyways’ is not a word. My reaction to ‘anyways’ is similar to my reaction to room temperature water. I know, however, that this is my overcompensation for never having gone to college, so we don’t really need to dissect it.”

“Okay, so back to your being looked after…”

“Yes, I’ve infantilized myself.”

“And how did that feel, having everyone know where you were?”

“Great, because I was the adult and the baby at the same time. But, eventually, I got sick of that too. Too many people up my ass all the time. It’s like I want people to be thinking about me—but not to be in my face about it. Everything with me is black or white. All or nothing.”

    “Life or death,” Dan said. Dan is very calm and talks a lot about being present. He doesn’t have a lot of sarcasm, and he is slightly unsure about what to do with mine. He is sixty and somewhat slight, and always comes rushing in to our appointment from outside a little windswept, key ring jingling. Ironically, I’m always there ten minutes early, waiting for him—a nice benefit of never having been picked up on time as a child; I never want anyone waiting for me, because I know what that feels like. Hang on—is that empathy?