How to Murder Your Life

by Cat Marnell

  “Where’s Gabby?” he whispered. Guys weren’t allowed in girls’ rooms, of course. Just then my roommate stepped out of the bathroom with only a towel on.

  “Hey,” she said to him. They stared at each other. Then, to me: “Can you look me out?”

  “Uh—” The bathroom door slammed shut before I got a chance to answer. I heard the shower turn on. And then . . .

  “Ahh!” Gabby moaned. “Ahh!”

  “UUH,” the boy grunted. “UHH.”

  “Ahh! Ahhh!”

  Ew. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. There was no way I was going to stay here thirty days.

  * * *

  Miss New Jersey wasn’t lying. It did suck at Spirit House. We were in that basement from nine in the morning to nine at night every day.

  “NEWWXGGKWW YORXXKGHK . . .” Someone switched on Z100 every rec break. “NEW YOWRXGHHXRK—NEW YOGGHXRK—NEW YOXGHXRK!” Alicia Keys was always garbled. By the end of day three, I wanted to climb into the boom box and strangle her.

  I tried to focus on treating my addiction. I tried to think of poor Mister Reggie and all the sick and suffering addicts of the world. I tried to be grateful to be there. I tried to stick it out. We all did! But we weren’t in a “program.” We were in a holding pen.

  On the fifth day, Miss New Jersey made a big announcement.

  “I’m gonna go AMA tomorrow,” she said. The tracksuit gang put down their forks.

  “No!” said the redhead.

  “You’re gonna go right back to using,” the dirty-blonde protested.

  “You’ll break your father’s heart,” Gabby said. They looked at me.

  “Huh?” I said. I’d been thinking about Lucky.

  “Cat’s the oldest one here,” Miss New Jersey said. “Why don’t we let her decide? Cat, should I go AMA tomorrow?”

  “If you go, I’ll go,” I said. “Let’s do it!”

  “No!” Gabby snapped at me. “Are you crazy?” Arguably. “[Miss New Jersey], don’t listen to her. Don’t you dare go. Don’t even think about it!”

  Miss New Jersey exhaled.

  “All right,” she said. “One more day.” Crisis averted. We all resumed eating our beef lasagna.

  On the seventh day, I was so desperate to get out of that basement that I faked a stomachache during morning group and went up to my room to lie down. Someone sent Gabby to get me—just in time for another fun lunch with the girls.

  “I’m definitely going AMA tomorrow,” Miss New Jersey said again.

  “That’s your addiction talking!” Gabby said.

  “You’re just gonna relapse!” the redhead said.

  “You’ll break your dad’s heart,” I said. Everyone ignored me. I slurped my fruit punch.

  On the eighth day I went to get drug tested on the fourth floor and saw Mister Reggie’s room was empty.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Mister Reggie?” the nurse said. “He went AMA.”

  * * *

  On the ninth day, I approached a bored-looking staffer and told her I wanted out.

  “You’re aware that you’re leaving against medical advice?” the woman said.

  “I am,” I said. They let me go upstairs and gather my beauty products, underwear, Payne Whitney journal, and apartment keys. I threw everything in a clear garbage bag and slung it over my shoulder, hobo style. Then I was out on the sidewalk in Westfield. Freedom! Vive la pillhead, as they say in France.

  It was warm for November. There was even a lovely drizzle, like God Himself was spritzing my face with Jurlique Calendula Calming Mist. I walked to a New Jersey Transit station and bought a ticket. The sun came out while I waited on the outdoor platform. A Manhattan-bound train—a double-decker—arrived ten minutes later. I snuggled into a seat on the upper level and looked out the window. I kept thinking about my job at the magazine. I had a strange feeling that I’d never had before: I wasn’t sure that I could come back from all of this. But I had to try.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was at Penn Station. I took the subway downtown and then walked back home through the East Village. My apartment looked like it had been ransacked by cat burglars—that is, just like I’d left it. I found my Adderall bottle twisted in my duvet right away. I didn’t want to sleep that night. It felt too good to be home with all of my things.

  I called Jean’s line in the morning.

  “Jean Godfrey-June’s office,” Simone answered.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Cat!” Simone said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  “Good,” Simone said.

  “Can you tell Jean I’m coming back today?”

  Another pause.

  “Why don’t you—” Simone started.

  “Thanks,” I said, and hung up. I threw on my white Alexander Wang jeans, a glow-in-the-dark plastic rosary, and my white Helmut Lang leather straitjacket. I stood in front of the dirty mirror and looked myself straight in the eye for a second. Then I was out the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I SHOULD HAVE GRACEFULLY ADMITTED defeat when I returned to Lucky in the third week of November. Instead, I stuck around. Everyone treated me with kid gloves; Jean Godfrey-June was particularly protective as always. She told me to take it easy, gave me minimal writing assignments, and repeatedly pulled me into her office to check in, and to tell me to believe in myself. That I was talented. That I was creative. That it wasn’t going to always feel like it felt today. But I could no longer hear her.

  I’d returned to drugs the same way I’d gone back to work: quickly, and without thinking too much about it. My weeks-long abstinence had been a very nice holiday, but now that I was back in my regular life, I was taking a big, soul-flattening daily mix of pills just like before. Then I was deep inside my addiction again. Was it obvious? Probably. I wasn’t engaged with people when I talked to them. My affect was flat as a flounder. I was popping in and out of the office to smoke like a drunk girl at a bar. I wasn’t interested in the thank-you Sprinkles cupcakes that arrived from Pantene. I sat at my desk chair picking at my scalp and staring into space. You know. Little things! But they all add up. And my boss had to observe this stuff every day and—I imagine—figure out what exactly she was going to do about me.

  I wasn’t allowed to attend events anymore.

  “For now,” Jean said.

  It was the height of the holiday season. Now there wasn’t much for me to do but open gifts. I kept attending invite meetings, making things awkward for everybody. My coworkers would divide the dinners, press trips, and mascara launches three ways while I sat there with my eyes as glazed as a Krispy Kreme. I had no one to blame but myself, but still, it hurt my pride.

  And then. Talk about adding insult to injury! With Cristina and Simone doubling down on events, I was assigned both weekly production meetings: Tuesday and Thursday mornings. And these would go about as expected.

  “Beauty Spy Three?” Regan, the managing editor, would ask.

  “Ummmm . . .” I’d say.

  I started calling in sick—a lot—for the first time in my career. I’d always shown up for work before my second disability leave: I showed up high, I showed up bloody, I showed up crying and hid in the beauty closet all day, but I showed up. Not anymore.

  “I can’t come in,” I’d mumble to Simone or Cristina from bed. I never called my boss directly. “Tell Jean.” Then I’d hang up, turn my ringer off, and not check e-mail all day. It was sneaky and avoidant, and don’t think everybody didn’t know it.

  “If you’re going to stay home, you must speak to me,” Jean would ream me out the next day. “Is that clear?”

  I’d nod. Then three days later, I’d leave a message with the intern.

 
Despite all this, my boss kept trying to keep my career—and me—afloat. After Christmas break, JGJ told me that she had great news. Everyone loved my once-a-week luckymag.com posts so much that they wanted me to blog three to five times a day! It was an obviously made-up position that played to my strengths and also kept me at my desk, where JGJ could keep an eye on me. I tried to be grateful. I gave it a shot, but nothing I wrote was clever or witty. My spark was gone. And I was too tired to fake it.

  My addiction was beating me like a rug. It became harder and harder to get out of bed at Avenue C. I started oversleeping, arriving forty minutes late. Sometimes I didn’t come in until noon.

  “Golden Globes Beauty: Cameron Rocks the ‘Cat Marnell Is Late for Work’ Look” I wrote of a messily coiffed Ms. Diaz on January 20, 2010. Another post from this time alluded to sitting down in the shower. I was giving up.

  * * *

  By late January, I’d lost the ten pounds I’d put on eating French bread pizza and psych-ward bagels. Then I lost five more. I’d bring a stir-fry back to my desk and eat two water chestnuts before I lost interest. Thump! I’d throw it away in my trash can. Often Jean lifted her eyes and saw me doing this. And I saw her seeing me.

  I’d stopped sleeping again, too. One afternoon when Jean, Cristina, and Simone were all out, I was sitting at my desk when I saw it: tissue paper moving at my feet. Something alive was in there!

  “AAUGHHH!” I sprung out of that chair so fast that I careened into the beauty closet.

  “There’s a rat under my desk!” I cried to the intern. “HELP!” Intern put down the Rodin Face Oil she was about to file and let me drag her back to my cubicle. She got on her hands and nubile teen knees to investigate.

  “There’s nothing here,” Intern said, pulling out sheets of designer tissue paper. I went to the Condé Nast nurse’s office for a rest after that. I’d been up for two straight days.

  The following Monday, I pulled another all-nighter. I was still wavy when I sat down for the Tuesday-morning production meeting.

  “Beauty Spy One?”

  “I dunno . . .” Ray glared at me.

  “Beauty Spy Four?”

  “Dunno . . .” I slurred through the whole thing like I was Johnny Depp at the Hollywood Film Awards.

  Word got back to Jean, of course. I’d sobered up by the time she called me into her office that afternoon. It was gray outside the windows of 4 Times Square, with a fluffy flurry swirling around.

  “I’m just depressed,” I lied—as I always did. “It’s not drugs or alcohol.”

  “You must do better,” Jean said—as she always did.

  “I know,” I said. “I just . . . don’t . . . know . . . what is wrong . . .” I met Jean’s eyes. “With me.”

  We both sat there.

  “What else can we do to help you?” For the thousandth time.

  “I’m just going through a rough patch,” I said.

  I returned to my cubicle and sat down. Jean resumed editing with her blue pens. I started opening messenger bags with my numb hands.

  Then I stopped. It was silent in the beauty department. Cristina wasn’t there; neither was Simone. It was just my boss and me.

  I stared at the gray carpet for a long time.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” I blurted out.

  What are you doing? someone screamed inside of me.

  “Hmm?”

  “I can’t do this anymore,” I repeated.

  “What?” Jean looked up from her work.

  “I quit,” I said. I was still slumped in my desk chair. “I quit my job.”

  “Come in here!” she said. I obeyed and then resumed slumping, this time in a chair opposite her. Jean shut the door. “Look at me!” I lifted my eyes. “There are still so many options. You don’t have to do this! Talk to me. Tell me how we can help you.”

  I stared at her. I was very tired. I thought about telling her the truth all over again: that it was drugs and alcohol, that I had been lying ever since I got back from Silver Hill.

  “No,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Jean kept saying. “We want to help you. Let us help you!”

  But I didn’t want help. I was so tired of the fight inside of me.

  “I can’t have a job anymore.” I shook my head. “I am so sorry, Jean.”

  My ambition and my addiction had been duking it out like two boxers in a ring for years. My ambition was bloodied, bruised, and—­finally, now—defeated. Ding ding ding. That is supposed to be a bell. Addiction won. I didn’t want to be an editor in chief or a creative director or a beauty director anymore. I just wanted to go to bed.

  * * *

  And that was that. I officially terminated my career at the greatest media company in the world in February 2010. I wish I could tell you how it felt to say good-bye to Jean, Kim, and all of my colleagues. I want to tell you how it felt as I packed up my desk, loaded everything into a taxi, and drove away from the dream. But I don’t remember. Or maybe I’m confused. Maybe I do remember—it’s just that by that point, I wasn’t feeling anything at all.

  I wanted to put my blackout curtains at Avenue C right up, go to sleep, and stay that way forever, but there was one last push I had to make. I’d been given a month’s pay and—more crucially—one more precious month of health-care coverage. Over the next thirty days, I tore through my usual Upper East Side psychiatrist circuit like I was on Supermarket Sweep. I filled a few months’ worth of Adderall, Adderall XR, Vyvanse, Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, Ambien, and Lunesta. Each script was only five or ten dollars with my Aetna card.

  When my insurance ran out, I officially bowed out of the game of life. I was all alone. No more Condé. No more alarm clocks, no more F train. No more iced coffee. No more beauty events; no more desksides; no more production meetings; no more editors in chief. No more deadlines. No more pedicures; no more haircuts. No more Internet—I’d only used that at work. No more outside world. No more getting dressed. No more effort. It was all over.

  It was just me.

  I slept through March. When I woke up at strange hours—time didn’t matter anymore—I’d turn on my side to stare at the wall I’d been collaging ever since I moved in.

  HELP, Jack Pierson scratched out on one drawing of a mascara wand.

  FUCK THIS LIFE, the artist Weirdo Dave told me in another one.

  LIFE IS A KILLER, it read over a photo of William S. Burroughs.

  INSANE! the Britney-on-a-gurney Star cover read.

  WAS IT MURDER? That was the headline of the Anna Nicole Smith New York Post front page I’d tacked up. All of this toxicity comforted me. It made me feel less alone.

  But I wasn’t even there—inside my body. One day I looked in the mirror and hardly recognized myself. I was so pale, with an inch and a half of black roots. Eye makeup was smudged all over my face. The bathroom was crusty with clothes and a broken Essie nail polish bottle stuck to the floor. Glass pieces stuck up like stalagmites. When I sat down to pee, I saw blood in my underwear. I’d forgotten about periods. I’d forgotten I was a woman.

  Swamp Thing snoozed through April. Did I worry about money? No. I shut off that part of my brain (drugs helped: I was always either high or unconscious). I ordered grilled cheese every day just to barf it up. When my bank account hit zero, I stuffed bags full of all the designer stuff I’ve been namedropping like a brat this whole book—A.P.C. dresses, Prada cashmere cardigans, YSL T-shirts—and hauled them to Buffalo Exchange. I sold it all. Marco’s things, too. The swag Christmas presents from beauty companies fetched the most.

  Of course, a hundred bucks here and there didn’t pay the two-­thousand-dollar rent. So neither did I. I kept waiting for someone to bang on my door. My apartment seemed just like my job—something I was bound to lose.

  * * *

  Months later, people did come
pounding on my door, but it wasn’t rent money they were after. It was early spring.

  BANG BANG BANG.

  What? I jerked awake to the racket. It was a sunny afternoon in May. I was on my sofa, wearing a leopard-print chiffon slip by Mischen. It was sheer and very short, with a lace hem. What was going on?

  Then I remembered that I was overdosing.

  Yup. I’d run out of both money and Adderall, and I’d decided to die. I’d taken every pill in the house—let’s say twenty Xanax bars and twenty Ambien—and washed them down with Diet Snapple.

  My mom had texted me just as the pills started kicking in.

  I a0e24jeust took an overdose bbkfbal, I’d texted back. Then I’d started shutting down.

  And now here I was, still on the couch, slipping out of consciousness. Trying to, anyway. BANG BANG BANG. The noise kept bringing me back into focus.

  “POLICE!” a man was shouting. BANG BANG BANG. They were jiggling at the knob. “OPEN UP!” Yeah, right. I crawled over to the door and sort of . . . collapsed against it, and put my ear up to everything.

  “We need to go through your window!” someone was hollering over the din . . . at my next-door neighbor?

  “What’s going on?” She was hollering back. Then I heard thump-thump-clang-thump-clang: firefighters, with their tanks on their backs. Oh God. I didn’t want to listen anymore.

  I slid down to the floor and curled up in a ball.

  My eyelids were so heavy . . .

  GRRZZZZZZZZ! I woke up to drilling.

  But then I went under again. Mmm.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG. I opened my eyes. GRZZZZZZZZZ­ZZZZ. That drill!

  Then I heard a familiar voice.

  “CAITLIN,” it was screaming. “UNLOCK THE DOOR!”

  My big sister was out there! I tried to lift my head, but it was like I had a broken neck.