Unbearable Lightness

by Portia de Rossi

  I was in pain, so I cried. I couldn’t move my legs, my wrists, and my fingers, so I cried. I had to be carried into the makeup trailer, so I cried. I was embarrassed, so I cried. I had ruined my career, so I cried. I had ruined my enjoyment of life and wanted to die, so I cried.

  I wanted to escape just like my dad had escaped, to fly away, to fade gently into black.

  I sat stiffly in the makeup chair to have my makeup removed. It was the first time I’d ever allowed that to happen because I didn’t like the makeup artist to see all the flaws I’d concealed before she began her work concealing my flaws—before she made my skin color more even, my eyes bigger, my lips fuller. It was ironic to me that I allowed this end-of-day pampering ritual for the first time on the last day of my career. It was over. I was over.

  The lights around the mirror began to bleed into my face. I couldn’t quite see my face for the white light around it. I saw two ugly black dots that were my pupils until I couldn’t see them anymore either. I felt myself floating away, fading into black. I knew I was passing out, but I could no longer hold on. The last thing I remembered was a hot towel being pressed onto my face. Then I let go.

  Out of the blackness came a vision of myself as a little girl spinning around in a tiara and a pinkish-red tutu with a rhinestone-sequined bodice. I’m spinning around and around, doing pirouettes in a church hall. My mother is in the center of the first row. I use her as a spot by focusing only on her, turning my body first before whipping my head around and back to the spot that is my mother’s smiling face. With each piroutte, however, instead of being more impressed, she is less impressed. With each spot she is smiling less. The smile turns into a frown and the little girl is no longer wearing a tiara and a tutu but jeans and a black tank top. The little girl has spun into an adult and my mother is no longer there. I search for her in the front row, but she isn’t there. Instead I see myself. I realize that the person in the front row, disapproving of me, unhappy with me is not my mother. It’s me. I look disgusted by the image of myself. It is clear by the way my head is partially turned away, my face contorted in a grimace, that I hate myself. I pirouette again fast, to spin away from the image, too disturbing to look at any longer. But I keep spinning and gathering momentum, the centrifugal force won’t allow me to stop. I can’t stop. Now I can’t see anything. I am tumbling now. I have fallen off my axis. I’m spinning into the blackness. The spinning suddenly stops.

  I have escaped.

  29

  “MISS DE Rossi? I have Dr. Andrews on the line.”

  I sat in my dressing room on the set of Ally McBeal, lit a cigarette, and breathlessly awaited my test results. I had to get off the treadmill to answer the phone and both the treadmill and the fan I’d rigged to blow air onto my face were straining and noisily whirring. It was quite an effort to get to the phone quickly because sharp movements caused me to feel a lot of pain, sometimes to the point of almost blacking out. I could barely work out anymore, not only because of the pain but because I was too tired. I was tired because I was often too hungry to sleep. When I did sleep I dreamt about food. Last night I had a dream that I took a sip of regular Coke thinking it was diet and the shock of accidentally ingesting real sugar catapulted me back into consciousness. Most times, though, I dreamt about willingly stuffing my face. I dreamt about eating a whole pizza or plate full of French fries. I tended to feel so bad about it when I woke up, I cried. I sobbed as if I’d really done it—it just felt so jarring, so frightening. I thought that I had a problem because I was scared to eat. I was actually scared of food. I no longer trusted myself. I figured I’d lost my willpower.

  I felt nervous. Not that I didn’t feel anxious all the time, but I felt even worse knowing that what came next was going to change everything.

  I can’t stay thin. I just wasn’t built for it. I wasn’t born with thin legs and I can’t keep them. For over a year I’ve managed to maintain my weight, but if I keep up that maintenance to the exclusion of everything else, then I’ll have anorexia.

  As I sat at the desk and held for the doctor (didn’t he call me?), I felt a roll of fat on my stomach. I pinched it with my thumb and forefinger. There was about an inch of fat that went right around to the sides, and yet at 98 pounds, I knew I was grossly underweight. I almost laughed out loud at the irony of it. My rib cage and my hip bones were jutting out, yet there was a roll of fat on my stomach taunting me, letting me know that it had outsmarted me, that it had won. It was ironic also that in order to get rid of that fat, I’d have to have had the energy to do crunches, but without putting caloric energy in my body I didn’t have the strength to do them, so now it would just stay there on my stomach in triumph, never to be challenged again. As I sat and waited to hear my results, I felt a little relief knowing that everything was about to change. I couldn’t imagine living year after year constantly battling in a fight you could never win. Anorexia is exhausting.

  I will listen to what the doctor says and do what he tells me to do.

  After collapsing in Toronto, I had no choice but to get help. I blacked out in the makeup chair and my private medical information seemed to be passed around and shared with anyone who cared to ask. My body was no longer under my control. I woke up to the medic taking my blood pressure and ordering blood tests. He called my physician, who called specialists and within days I had undergone a battery of tests. Blood tests, bone density tests; I had to show up with my body to whatever test it was he thought might contribute a puzzle piece to his diagnosis. I couldn’t argue. I was under contract and I could barely finish the movie.

  But the movie ended two weeks ago and I was still being compliant with the doctors. One doctor turned into four, and so there always seemed to be someone to answer to. They had me cornered. I couldn’t escape them even if I wanted to.

  But I don’t want to. I’m tired. I’m sad all the time, and I’m in pain. I want to give up.

  “Hi, Portia?”

  “Hi, Dr. Andrews.” I waited for some pleasantries to be exchanged but none were forthcoming.

  “There are quite a few things I’m seeing from the test results.” He took a beat as if to ready himself before delivering a blow. It scared me. I knew there would be something wrong, but his hesitation sent a wave of fear through my body. The wave of adrenaline connected the pain from my ankles to my wrists, and my head began to spin. My head had been feeling like half of its regular weight even when it wasn’t spinning. Because of that, I often felt unbalanced. I took a drag of my cigarette. Maybe my head is spinning from the nicotine? I calmed myself.

  There is no point in being nervous because I can’t affect the outcome. What’s done is done.

  “Okay. Let’s start with your bone density. Uh . . . according to these results it shows that you have osteoporosis.”

  “Ah . . . how long has it been since you’ve had your period?”

  “A year or more.”

  “Okay. Your liver enzymes were extremely elevated, which are actually at the levels of cirrhosis.”

  “Okay. Your electrolyte and potassium levels are pretty dangerous. At this rate, they could effect how your organs are functioning.”

  “Okay. I guess the most important thing that the tests showed is that you have an autoimmune disease called lupus.”

  I exhaled the smoke in my lungs and extinguished my cigarette in one motion. I limply held the phone and sat staring into the full-length mirror opposite my desk. I saw a round face, thin arms, a bony rib cage, a thick waist, and big, thick legs. It was the same body I had always seen, only smaller. The proportions were the same. If y is exactly half of x, then 2:1 is the ratio of my body parts. My thighs would always be the same in relation to my waist and my arms—it was all the same, but in a smaller version.

  Game over. I lose.

  The whirring of the treadmill sounded like a vinyl record stuck on a track.

  Get on the treadmill.

  The bars either side of the belt looked like a cage.

  Get o
n the treadmill.

  I don’t know what to say to the voice that will shut it up. I’m dying and it still won’t be quiet.

  “I have lupus! I’m sick!”

  You’re fat.

  “No I’m not!”

  The voice was echoing, reverberating. The word fat was swirling through my head, sounding the alarms. But above the din of the drill sergeant and the alarms and the ticks of missed beats, a sense of peace overcome me.

  I’m sick. I’ve successfully lowered the bar. I don’t have to be a straight-A student or be a movie star to be proud of myself. I just have to live.

  I accept myself just as I am. I accept myself.

  The voice stops. Apart from laughter coming from the hallway I can’t hear anything. It is deathly quiet in my head. And then I said something to the voice I have always wanted to say:

  “Go to hell.”

  EPILOGUE

  I CAN’T EXPLAIN THE birds to you even if I tried. In the early morning, when the sun’s rays peek over the mountain and subtly light up the landscape in a glow that, if audible, would sound like a hum, the birds sing. They sing in a layered symphony, hundreds deep. You really can’t believe how beautiful it is. You hear bass notes from across the farm and soprano notes from the tree in front of you all at once, at varying volumes, like a massive choir that stretches across fifty acres of land. I love birds. But not as much as my wife loves them. My wife thinks about them whereas I only notice them once they call for attention. But she looks for them, builds fountains for them, and saves them after they crash into windows. I’ve seen her save many birds. She holds them gently in the palm of her hand, and she takes them to one of the fountains she’s built especially for them and holds their beaks up to the gentle trickle of water to let them drink, to wake them up from their dazed stupor. No matter how much time it takes, she doesn’t leave them until they recover. And they mostly always do.

  The sound of the big barn doors opening prompts me to begin walking toward the stables. I clutch my coffee mug and walk in bare feet, wearing only my pajama pants and tank to say good morning to my horses.

  As I arrive at the barn, Julio, who helps with the horses, is mucking out the stalls, an activity that I would help with were I wearing shoes. I love to muck out stalls.

  “Hi, Julio.”

  “Morning, Portia. Riding today?”

  “Yep. A little later.”

  I love riding horses. I love bathing them and grooming them. I love their strong, muscular bodies, their athleticism, and their kindness. I love the companionship and the trust a rider builds with her horse. I love everything about horses. Horses saved my life.

  “Good morning, Mae.” The regal head of my big, beautiful Hanoverian horse pokes out from her stall. I wrap my arms around her neck and kiss her muzzle. I bought Mae in 2002 when I was recovering from my eating disorder. Learning how to ride her, learning her language, and being passionate about something other than my weight or looks shifted my focus away from my obsession with being thin long enough to let the doctors and the therapists do their work. I had found love in Mae. I had found a reason to get up in the morning.

  “Ellen not up yet?” Ellen usually accompanies me in the mornings to the stables.

  “Nah. I’m letting her sleep in.”

  I crept out of the bedroom this morning and out of the cottage not even grabbing shoes or a sweatshirt as I was trying desperately not to wake her. Ellen works really hard and needs to rest when we’re at our farm on the weekends. She especially needed to sleep this morning as she was awake most of the night reading long after I fell asleep. She was awake most of the night reading this book.

  After petting Mae, Archie, Femi, Monty, and Diego Garcia, I went back up to the cottage. As I opened the door to the porch I heard the voice that makes my heart the happiest to hear.

  “Coff-ee!” Ellen calls out for coffee like a dying man calling out for water as he perishes in the desert. It always makes me laugh.

  I walked into the bedroom, plop onto the bed, and wrap my arms around her.

  “Baby,” she says sleepily, “you were crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “So sad. I feel like I was reading about a completely different person.”

  “I feel like I was writing about a different person.”

  “You were so sick. What happened to the lupus?”

  “It was a misdiagnosis. I just needed to eat. And the cirrhosis and osteoporosis—all of it went away. I was lucky that I didn’t do serious damage.”

  “You poor thing. I wish I could’ve been there to save you.”

  “You did save me. You save me every single day.”

  I kiss her and get up off the bed to make her coffee.

  “I’m so proud of you, baby. It’ll help a lot of people.” As I pour the coffee, she suddenly appears at the doorway of the kitchen, her blond head poking around the door. “Just be sure and tell the people that you’re not crazy anymore.”

  I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier by fitting into a sample size dress, by never worrying that I couldn’t zip up my wardrobe from episode to episode, day after day. Just as I didn’t decide to become anorexic, I didn’t decide to not be anorexic. I didn’t decide to become healthy. I decided not to die. I didn’t even care to live better than I’d been living, necessarily. I just knew at the moment of hearing my test results that I didn’t want to live as a sickly person who would slowly suffer and end up dead. The news that I had seemingly irreversible illnesses punctured my obsessive mind and rendered my weight-loss goals meaningless. I lost anorexia. It was too hard to hold on to. By the end I felt as though I was clinging on to anorexia in the same way you would cling to the rooftop of a building, your body dangling precariously over the other side, begging for release. Because it was more exhausting to hang on, and because I had a real reason for the first time in the form of lupus, I let go of dieting. I watched as my biggest accomplishment, my greatest source of self-worth, plummeted to the ground. I had climbed slowly, methodically, all the way to the top only to fall too fast to even see where I had been.

  Anorexia was my first love. We met and were instantly attracted to each other. We spent every moment of the day together. Through its eyes, I saw the world differently. It taught me how to feel good about myself, how to improve myself, and how to think. Through it all, it never left my side. It was always there when everyone else had left, and as long as I didn’t ignore it, it never left me alone. Losing anorexia was painful—like losing your sense of purpose. I no longer knew what to do without it to consider. Whether the drill sergeant approved or disapproved was no longer a concern because he was no longer there. I let him go with the overwhelming feeling that continuing to fight for him was futile because he was too good for me; he was too perfect, too strict and demanding. Slowly, over several months, maybe even years, the feeling that I wasn’t good enough for him dissipated, and I gradually came to feel as though we were just a mismatch, he and I. We never should’ve been together in the first place. We were too different for each other, and we wanted different things from life. Knowing that, however, didn’t make it less painful. Without anorexia, I had nothing. Without it, I was nothing. I wasn’t even a failure; I simply felt like I didn’t exist.

  I was diagnosed with lupus. I had osteoporosis and was showing signs of cirrhosis of the liver. My potassium and electrolyte balance were at critical levels, threatening the function of my organs. I no longer felt lazy, like I was giving up because it was too hard, I felt defeated. I felt as though I simply didn’t have a choice. I had to accept that the road I had chosen was the wrong road. It led to sickness and death. I had to allow the voices of the professionals into my closed mind. I had to try to take their road.

  As I began the long journey on the road to recovery, there were a couple of detours that I wasn’t prepared for. Initially I had thou
ght that once I began to gain back the weight, I would have the strong support base that I’d felt in Australia. I thought I would have loving, concerned people around me to ensure that I was getting healthy. But after I had gained an acceptable amount of weight and looked like a regular person, mostly everyone in my life assumed that the problem was solved. Almost instantly, I felt like no one was listening anymore, no one cared. It felt like caring was only necessary when my life was on the line. As I gained weight I was no longer something to worry about. I truly felt like a pubescent thirteen-year-old, ugly, voiceless; my cute days of being delightful were in the past, and my future accomplishments were too distant to elicit any kind of hope or joy. At that point, if I had still had the axe to grind, if I hadn’t got what I wanted from the disorder, some sense of acceptance of my sexuality, I would have relapsed. It would have been very easy for me to start losing weight again to get the attention and the concern that felt like love. It would have felt like a great accomplishment to not just do it once, but twice, proving to myself that I had the willpower I had always suspected was only fleeting.

  Gaining weight is a critical time. The anorexic mind doesn’t just magically go away when weight is gained—it gets more active. Anorexia becomes bigger and stronger as it struggles to hold on, as it fights for its life. If I hadn’t seen my mother break down and accept me for being gay, I would’ve gotten right back on the path that made me rebel in the first place, because being anorexic did feel a little like rebellion. It felt like a passive-aggressive way of renouncing my mother’s control over me. It was definitely a statement that demanded “accept my sexuality or accept my death!” Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well again means you have to check back in. It is absolutely crucial that you are ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick. Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start life over. And with all the time it takes to have an eating disorder—literally the whole day is consumed by it, both mentally and physically—it’s important to find something other than your body image to be passionate about. You have to create a whole new life to check into, and the life I knew was waiting for me was a future relationship and the acceptance of it from my family. I had the key ingredient to want to check back in: I had hope.