Life Will Be the Death of Me

by Chelsea Handler

  Ironically, this was happening at the same time I was contemplating going downstairs to tell the crew and Molly what had just happened. I was hearing that I had a choice to stay and see where this would take me or to default to my comfort zone, which has always been and most likely always will be socializing. The voice was my own subconscious, telling me, It’s okay to be alone, it’s a choice you can make, while the other part of me was thinking, But I really want to go downstairs and hang out with my friends.

  I had made a huge discovery, and for me that was enough.

  “I’m good,” I said, opening my eyes. Then I got up, wiped the tears off my face, went downstairs, ordered a vodka on the rocks, and told everyone what had happened.

  * * *

  • • •

  I loved my experience with ayahuasca. Ayahuasca doesn’t make you feel euphoric. It’s not like Ecstasy, where you feel sexual and open and you love everyone. It isn’t a social drug; it is a solitary experience. I remember every minute of it. I had this overwhelming feeling of love, and a feeling of looking at my life outside of my life. A total shift in perspective. It’s a wake-up call, and I can see how it saves people. Ayahuasca isn’t a drug I would recommend for everyone. If you have dark thoughts, it could take you down a dark path, but if you don’t have a fearful disposition and are fairly open-minded, there’s a chance you could get something giant out of it. A metanoia.

  * * *

  • • •

  My sister and I didn’t get along when we were growing up, but not because she was a bitch. She wasn’t. She was just shy, and I was the asshole. I thought she was lame. She thought I was the Devil. I remember sitting in my room, twirling my make-believe mustache, plotting how I was going to stay one step ahead of her. It was definitely more of a feeling than a specific memory. It was more of an overall vibe—I couldn’t trust her, and I felt like she was always holding me back.

  She tattled on me a lot, and I hated that. I’ve often thought that maybe we were just born in the wrong order. I should have been older, and she should have been the youngest. She wouldn’t have felt so threatened by me, and I wouldn’t have stolen her thunder, or been so spoiled. I would have known what it was like to look after someone else instead of always looking out for myself.

  My sister is quiet-funny. She’s not like me. Where I roar, she giggles. I always wanted adventure. Shana always wanted safety and security. She has always had this little-girl feel about her, whereas I was forty the day I was born. Rough, loud, and unapologetic. Shana was quiet, shy, and careful. She was a virgin until she met her husband. I lost my hymen in the womb.

  My sister just wanted to be my sister, and it was a giant epiphany for me to come to that realization. She needed my love, and I was being selfish. I lacked empathy. Again.

  * * *

  • • •

  One thing that stands out so prominently about my childhood: my mother favored Shana, and I knew it was because Shana needed it. I had no jealousy about that. Shana drove me crazy because I thought she was a prude and a tattletale, but I was never jealous of her. It was more along the lines of, When are you going to stop playing the trumpet, and be cool? I didn’t know then that the trumpet was cool.

  Because I wasn’t jealous of her, it never occurred to me that she might be jealous of me. She had been the baby for five years before I was born; she was living the high life, until I steamrolled right over her, sucked up all the energy, and left her in the dust. I didn’t know the feeling of being jealous when I was that young, because there was no one to be jealous of. Shana was always in my rearview mirror. She was never in my way, but I was always in hers.

  * * *

  • • •

  My ayahuasca experience came before I started seeing Dan. I wonder what would open up if I did it again, now that I am so much more aware of my blind spots. I know so much more than I did a year ago. I know to wait. I know to listen more than talk. I know silence isn’t deadly—it’s strong. I know that I lack empathy, and I need to look out for it.

  When I came out of the hut, I found our director and Molly standing by the monitor. Molly was crying and holding her arms out to hug me.

  “It was all good,” I reassured her. “Nothing sad; it was all about Shana. That I need to love her more.”

  “It was so strange watching you crying, but smiling and laughing the whole time. I thought for sure you were having a mental breakdown, and we were going to have to carry you out of here on a stretcher, but you just seemed so happy,” she said, sniffling.

  That is Molly in a nutshell. If she loves you, you will know it and feel it every single day you’re alive. She is one of nine children, and treats every one of them—as well as both her parents—like they are the eye of the storm. She does this for her boyfriend, she does this for me, she does this for Karen, and she probably does this for a bunch of people I’ve never even met. She shows up when you need her, and sometimes even when you think you don’t—and she stays. She is filled with love. “Stuffed” would be a more apt way to describe it. Stuffed with love.

  I didn’t tell Shana about my experience with the ayahuasca. What I did was change my behavior toward her. I was easier on her, I confided in her more, and I exercised more patience.

  When she saw the documentary, she called me and told me she had noticed a change in my behavior and now she knew why.

  “That was so sweet,” she told me. “I have totally noticed a difference.”

  That’s my sister. Just loving, and happy to be a part of things. Easygoing. Qualities I had never given any thought to, or admired. No demands for an apology. No hard feelings. Well, maybe there are hard feelings, but no feelings are hard enough to erase the deep love and understanding she will always have for me, and that I realized I needed to have for her.

  Now I trust her. She trusts me too. It was worth all of that to get here. These are the more vivid memories anyway. The higher notes. I could’ve watched us as children playing in the water for hours.

  When we did finally talk about how she had confronted my father about his son Anthony, she said, “I’m glad you saw what happened with Dad. Can you believe how laissez-faire he was about the whole thing?”

  “What an asshole,” I told her.

  “I almost took the piece of pizza and slapped him across the face,” Shana went on.

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked her. “That would have been great for my ayahuasca highlight reel.”

  * * *

  • • •

  There are sisters. And then there are sisters. My sisters and I have covered a lot of ground. It shifts. Simone was always a mother figure, and then at some point our roles reversed and I became the older sister. I don’t know if Simone sees it that way, but that’s the way I see it. She took care of me for so long that somewhere along the way it became time for me to take care of her.

  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 cons
iderable 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?

  I asked Dan if he thought I had ADD—or maybe I claimed to have it so that he wouldn’t have to waste his time diagnosing me with it. He didn’t think I had ADD, but it seemed to him that when I wasn’t interested in something, I had trouble pretending I was. This was not news. He told me I could take the actual test for ADD, but that it took eight hours.

  “That’s never going to happen. Let’s just assume I have it.”

  “I don’t think you have it, and I would have a very good sense, after sitting with you all these hours, if you did have ADD. You are a person who is very interested—in what you are interested in.”

  “I’m interested in being less spoiled.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can do better.”

  “Being spoiled is symbolic more than anything,” he told me. “You just explained beautifully that you want people to take care of you, so you’re always looking to fill that need, because it’s something you didn’t have growing up—adult supervision and reliability.”

  It felt good to start contributing to our dialogue in a concrete way. My favorite pursuit in the world is to sit around and shoot the shit with someone smarter than me. It made me feel like I was playing good tennis.

  * * *

  • • •

  At our next session, Dan asked me where I saw myself in five years.

  Just when I thought we had been making progress and that he understood who he was dealing with, I had to wonder if he had been listening to anything I said.

  “Five years? I don’t have a five-day plan. I’ve always assumed I’ll be dead in five years, no matter what year it is. Not in a macabre way or anything. I feel like I’ve had a full life. Like, this has been awesome. Things have been pretty easy, minus the death stuff. I’ve still managed to have a blast. I have great friends, family,” and then I stopped when I realized I was eulogizing myself.

  “And you don’t want children?”

  I gave Dan the same exasperated look I gave him when he asked me about my five-year plan. I felt like this was a good opportunity to bring up patience.

  “I’d like to talk about my lack of patience. It’s like God skipped me.”

  “How so?”

  “Because that question irritates me, because we’ve discussed this already, and I feel agitated. That can’t be a normal state. Constant agitation.”

  “Why are you agitated?”

  “Because I don’t like repetition. We’ve covered it. The same reason I’ve never read a book twice. Once I’ve gotten something, it holds little interest for me.”

  “Well, you move fast.”

  “Right. I need to exercise more patience. How do we do that? I’m spoiled and I’m entitled. I’d like to dial that all back.”

  “Tell me what you mean, exactly.”

  “If something takes too long, I just move on. I lose interest. I can’t deal with electronics or technology or people who work in airports. Basically, anything that takes too long. If there is a line at a magazine store in an airport, I’ll just wave twenty dollars up in the air so the airport security cameras catch it and then I’ll place it near the register and walk out with whatever item I’ve taken. I can’t deal with the slowness of the transaction. It drives me up a fucking wall.”

  “Well, that is spoiled,” Dan told me.

  “Isn’t that more entitled?” I asked him. “A black person wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that,” Dan told me. “By the way, that’s empathy.” He pointed at me. “Thinking about what it’s like to be a black person. You’re learning.”

  “Empathy couched in my entitlement. How convenient.”

  “You’re talking about becoming a systems thinker vers
us a linear thinker. To be able to look at the macro rather than the micro.”

  “Yes. I’ve been like this for a long time, and I don’t know if I can blame that on Chet dying. I’d like to, but I’m pretty sure I was throwing temper tantrums as a little girl before he died. I was always a bit of a hot mess.”

  “It makes sense when you were a little girl, because you were trying to get your parents to pay attention. Even before Chet died, it seemed the two of you already had an understanding about your parents’ lack of parenting, so it was in your consciousness.”

  “Or my unconsciousness.”

  “Or your subconsciousness.” He smiled.

  “The question is: Why am I so impatient as an adult?”

  “Okay,” Dan said, in his wonderfully measured way. “Give me an example of something that happens frequently.”

  “When I can’t turn on the TV in my house—or I can’t get the music on—that’s something that happens all the time, and then I have to call Brandon or Tanner. Whoever’s got the night shift.”

  This felt less like tennis and more like Ping-Pong, but if Dan wasn’t looking at me funny, I wasn’t going to be looking at me funny either.

  “What does it feel like when you can’t work your music?”

  “Annoyed.”

  “What’s underneath that?”

  “More annoyance.”

  “But what’s the emotion under it?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know. Anger?”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “Keep going. Are there any images that elicit the feeling?”

  I had no idea what Dan was talking about. “Musical notes?” I asked, searching.