The other contestants included names familiar to Italian viewers like Paola Perego, Guido Bagatta and Amanda Lear. And they were a very friendly bunch of famous presenters. On arrival at the set the production crew did, as it turned out, take away our cigarettes as well as our mobiles and passports and of course there was no alcohol allowed. At first I freaked out at the thought of such severity but I got to the final week, which meant I stayed 72 days out there – and I had the best time ever.
I got to speak to the kids every Sunday live on TV and they got to see Mum on the show every day – it was a fun programme with none of the nastiness that characterises some of those formats. I felt so good not drinking; everything seemed better – even the palm trees started to look more colourful after a while. We weren’t allowed a TV and there weren’t any newspapers. I also spent a few days in solitary in the camp prison when I had plenty of time to think and gather the strength to ask myself what I’d been doing to myself for so long.
My jail hut had a hole instead of a proper toilet and food was restricted to an apple and a bag of rice a day. I slept in a special sleeping bag to protect me from snakes and used the cold shower outside. A small camera crew came to interview me first thing in the morning and to film me last thing at night – when I wasn’t allowed to talk – and that was all I had to look forward to for a week. When the sun went down I was left in the dark with the sound of animals all around me and would memorise things to keep me busy, but I’d been through so much shit over the past few years that this basic level of life was almost a relief.
Under my wood floor was a nest of rats and when they realised I was friendly, they started coming up so I left rice out for them. One of them gave birth to a litter right there on the floor. When the camera crew asked me how I was dealing with things I told them I was talking to my friends.
‘What friends?’
‘The rats!’ I was really at ease with what was happening.
I won almost all the challenges I was set and I began to feel pride in myself, particularly because the work was very physical. About a week before we went to Mexico we trained in rock climbing and learned to abseil from a dam – tough for someone like me who doesn’t enjoy heights. There was also a mental aspect to the challenge in which they asked for three volunteers and said that we shouldn’t go for it if we were claustrophobic, but I always said, ‘Yes,’ to anything and I really meant it: I wanted to challenge myself. We were all buried and I lasted about 45 minutes down there, breathing through a small hole with dirt around me and the thought of tarantulas and snakes in the immediate vicinity; it was a buzz. Something inside me had woken up.
Even sleeping was a challenge. We were assigned a patch of farmhouse floor under a thin blanket and shared our camp with massive winged insects. The Mexicans said they were cucarachas, like the song, which I knew as cockroaches and they were very lively in the mornings. I heard them coming before I saw them with their big legs stamping on the ground like marching soldiers. All I could do was convince myself that all the animals would be my friends and these guys were among them. I was nearest the door and the first thing I’d see when I woke up was a pair of their beady eyes greeting me.
Apart from the cameraman and a doctor – and we weren’t ordinarily allowed communication with them – we had no contact with the outside world most of the time. I guess I came over as a nice person because when it got towards the end the producer let me know that the viewers had voted for me to be in the final: ‘Is there anything that you’d like to say to your husband and family?’
The decision, which I kept to myself beforehand, was to say, on television, that it was all over. I’d thought about it all the time in that last week and I knew that if I got on the plane and went back to things as they were, I would be back in the same old rut. I had been sober for three months and I’d really started to live again, but that feeling on its own couldn’t sustain me.
So that’s how it was that I told Raoul via a live two-way link-up, which was being watched by an audience at home. ‘Raoul, I’m so, so sorry that I have to tell you like this…’ I was as gentle about it as I could be. He didn’t even look upset, but went bright red as if he was embarrassed. I’m sure I’d have been in floods of tears if it had have been me.
The crew were stunned and it made big news in Italy where Raoul and I were seen as the model of a stable family. Now there really was no way back. The press tore into me, reporting that I wasn’t behaving like a fit mother. I couldn’t explain just why it was the only way I’d been able to break the news.
In the plane on the way back it seemed to me like Gitte, the strong, sensible, capable girl, was returning to me. It was wonderful to feel that I at last had the energy to follow up what I decided to do. My resolve didn’t weaken even when I stood face-to-face with Raoul. He was furious and insisted we should try to work things out, but my mind was made up.
I left Morcote with suitcases, clothes, my jewellery and a car, as had become something of a pattern in my life. There was nothing I wanted to be reminded of apart from my children. It was so over. I was always like that – when it’s over, it’s over and I was ready to move on. Why would I want to waste my time? I had enough to occupy me as it was. There was so much about my life that I wanted to change. I felt compelled to act to make a difference even though I was completely miserable. It was like when I was at school and, despite all the bullying, I would study hard to get good grades. Sometimes that even made the other kids bully me less. Now, though, I had a feeling that I hadn’t had in years – that I was going to make it. It was like meeting a dear old friend for the first time in ages.
I left Mexico on 2 April and was back in Milan by the 3rd. I left Morcote the next day and on 12 April I met Mattia – the man I went on to marry.
I had moved into a hotel and whenever I was in bed I would be staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the last 14 years of my life. How could it have gone so wrong? I had let people down so badly; I was so far away from where I wanted to be. I discussed my mistakes at length with my girlfriends. It was very hard, but this was an important cleansing process for me.
One of those friends said, ‘Gitte, you have got to move on. It’s about time you started to look forward rather than staying stuck in the past. Stop worrying away at it.’ She was right. Now I focused on the future. I’d wasted so much energy throughout my life in accumulating possessions that didn’t make me happy and weren’t of any use. I always got more stuff and to what end? I guess people expected it of me. You had to act in a certain way if you were going to be Brigitte Nielsen and I became trapped in the vicious circle. I needed not to concern myself with what other people thought about me. Now I could be myself – and I loved it.
Being determined to be realistic and positive made me feel lighter, almost as if I had physically lost weight. All of us have a tendency to overcomplicate things: we spend way too much time and energy on the unimportant stuff and we carry it all around with us for too long. We should be making decisions based on how we feel rather than picking away at old wounds. It was an incredible relief for me to consign all that baggage to the garbage bin of history. Within eight days of leaving Morcote I was already looking forward, though it took a little while for me to realise what was happening.
I took the kids to a local restaurant for lunch near Morcote. I knew the owner Mario and had often stopped by. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to eating out and love places which are familiar and safe; and I knew it was family-orientated and the kids enjoyed it as much as I did. There is a tradition of enjoying meals in Latin countries which is perfectly suited to me – everyone is smiley, chatty and likes to know each other’s business.
That day Mario was pestering me to meet a friend of his he thought I would really like. He thought this guy would make me feel good and make me laugh but I wasn’t having any of it. ‘Listen, Mario, I’m going through a miserable divorce and I only just have enough in me to put my life back together. I’m not in the mood t
o go on a date or even meet any of your friends.’
‘It’ll be good for you!’
‘No, Mario, I’m tired of men.’
I knew it would be good for me to spend some time on my own and with my children and my dogs – they were the only things I cared about now.
‘Yeah, well done,’ said Mario, ‘but you’re going to meet him anyway. He’s here today.’ And he pointed out a man who was approaching our table. Damn! Mario just didn’t get it that there was nothing in this world that would make me go on a date right then. Even if the man in question did have dark, warm eyes, a suntan, good skin and an attractive haircut… and not even if he was intelligent, a good conversationalist and funny… Then again… I might be going through a divorce, but it wasn’t as if I was dead, was it? But the decider was his age: he was 25.
‘My God, Mario!’ I said. ‘Please, I could be his mother! My oldest boy is 20 – it’ll never happen.’ But it did – and thank goodness. We ended up having a good lunch and an enjoyable afternoon. I still found it hard to get my head around the age gap, but we swapped numbers.
Afterwards, though, I wondered why young Mattia was interested in me. Was it because I was a celebrity? I’d long been paranoid about people liking me because of my status. And I was 15 years older than him with a couple of ex-husbands in my past and the children and the divorce, all that stuff. Why would anyone want to get involved with that messy set-up? Plus I hadn’t exactly been at my best that day: I have a really bad allergy that affects my eyes and they were all runny and red. I wasn’t wearing make-up and my hair looked as if I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I wasn’t supposed to meet anyone!
Mattia called the next day to arrange a date, but I turned him down and on the next couple of occasions he asked. Even when I did finally agree and he came over to call for me I didn’t have the courage to answer the door. I should have just admitted that I’d changed my mind. He was quite rightly really pissed off with the way I was acting. I didn’t feel attractive or sexy and I was just not feeling quite on top of things. Not to mention that age gap which still preyed on my mind. No, I couldn’t do it.
Our mutual friend Mario called to say, ‘He’s had enough now. If you want any chance of meeting him, you need to apologise. Meet with him.’ I had to admit to myself that I was behaving in an immature way and I wasn’t usually someone who played games like that. I relented and Mattia and I went for a drive over the other side of Lugano to Campione d’Italia, a delightful little independent region known for having its own casino and no taxes.
Mattia booked us into a cosy, comfortable Italian restaurant. We had real Italian pizza, with candlelight and music in the background, while we discussed life and everything from politics to literature and God to children. I had to remind myself that he was only 25 – he was a real old soul at heart. The chemistry and understanding was more than a match for the imbalance in our years. I completely fell for him – it was like being 16 all over again. He had a way of being which resonated deep inside me. It was the silly little things that I found myself adoring the most – like watching and loving the way that one of his eyes almost closed when he smiled, that sort of thing.
But it’s never good news when your heart is saying one thing and your head is telling you another. And while I thought, You know, you probably shouldn’t…, my heart was thumping away loud enough to drown out the cautionary voice. Yet my heart won – as it always does. I spent the night with Mattia in his tiny apartment far away from the huge villa which had become my Morcote prison. That night was a fairy tale as Mattia made my body feel full of life again. I felt beautiful and sexy and I felt adored – it was just what I needed. And there were certain physical things about his stamina that were particularly welcome – I wasn’t spending the night with some old dude, that’s for sure! It wasn’t just great in the moment, though, it was something that felt truly nourishing in every way. I hadn’t expected that anything could feel so wonderfully intense so soon.
Raoul moved out of Morcote and I thought I would give the place another go, but the villa represented everything that had brought me to attempting suicide and I couldn’t get past the fact. Dark shadows lay over each room and each brick contained a bad memory. When I was in the house on my own it was particularly bad; I was always convinced there was someone else in the house with me and continually had to check and recheck every room. This wasn’t for me. I left the villa for the last time and checked into the hotel where Mattia worked.
At last I felt safe and it was a pleasant novelty to be living full-time in a hotel. There was no fear here that we might be found. The hotel screened my calls and the manager reassured me that nobody would get to my door if I didn’t want them to; that was what I needed to hear at that point. Best of all I had my young, handsome lover close at hand: Mattia spent all his free time with me.
It wasn’t until the divorce was over that I moved and we went to Milan, where I thought the kids could be well educated. My lawyer found me the perfect apartment in the San Siro area and I celebrated on the night before I checked out of the hotel by having a meal with Mattia. I had come to a decision.
‘I’m crazy about you and I think we can have a great life together,’ I told him. ‘However, I need to be in Milan and if you can’t move there with me, I don’t know what we can do. It’s been fun but now we need to think about whether we’re going to be serious about this. After all these years I’ve run out of patience. I need an answer. I don’t want to pressurise you, but I have to move on with my life and I can’t do a long-distance thing or something that isn’t for real.’
I meant it, but I also knew it was a tough ask. Mattia had a good set-up: he was enjoying the carefree life of a young bachelor in Switzerland and I wanted to rip him out of that. What did I have to offer him? I wasn’t exactly over-the-hill yet but I was a mother of four with a lot of emotional baggage. I had set out the options but I really didn’t know how he was going to answer. The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t prepared to compromise and I wasn’t going to put myself through the trauma of trying to make a relationship work between two countries with a guy in the prime of his life who worked in a hotel stuffed full of attractive young ladies. I wasn’t stupid!
Mattia lay very quietly for a while, then he gently framed my face with his hands and looked straight into my eyes. ‘Gitte, I’m crazy about you too,’ he said, ‘and I think we can have something really wonderful together. However… I can’t live with a woman who smokes like a chimney and drinks far too much.’ I was astonished.
I’d thought at first that he was going to agree without thinking about it or even say that he couldn’t be with an older woman or didn’t want to commit; something like that. But, despite his youth, he had again got right to the heart of things: he’d totally got the measure of me in that short time. What went unsaid about me had not gone unnoticed by him; he had my attention.
I felt very naked and yet it was how I knew he cared about me. If he hadn’t have done, he wouldn’t have mentioned the booze. It was a long time since anyone around me – friends or family – had shown such interest in my well-being that they were willing to stop tip-toeing around and tell it to me like it was.
Love should be unconditional if it is to be real, but Mattia was smart enough to set out the rules before he let himself go. I was a great woman, but I was a woman with problems and more issues than you could ever imagine – and there were likely to be more to come, but he was willing to deal with that if I was, too. Be honest, he was saying. Are you going to fix yourself or not? If you aren’t gonna do it then I can’t follow you. This was my wake-up call and now I had to make it happen.
CHAPTER 23
COMEBACK TO REALITY
When Mattia arrived in Milan looking nervous and ill at ease I was immediately on edge. I was very happy with him and I wondered what was about to happen so I asked him what was going on. ‘I’m sick and tired of doing that commute between Switzerland and Italy…’ he began. I
was relieved that was all that bothered him. And he was right – he’d been living out of suitcases for months. Our relationship was still new enough for me to feel tingly and jumpy whenever we discussed things and I didn’t know how I would have taken it if he’d have been sick and tired of us together.
‘…so I resigned today. I’m ready to move in with you,’ he went on. ‘If that’s okay with you?’ Of course it was okay! It was more than okay, it was outrageous, wonderful and it was just… fucking great! Ever since then we have been inseparable.
Mattia is my best friend, my lover and he’s a friend to my kids. I wouldn’t just call him a step-dad. He’s my partner in crime and he manages some of my work for me too, a little bit of everything. Things are completely different now: Mattia won’t have me out doing any old job but makes sure that it works for me as much creatively as it does in the business sense. I’ve found myself turning down things that, without thinking, I might have accepted before – Mattia makes me consider what I’m doing even if it’s loads of money. He’s never pushy, but he guides me in the right direction and it’s worked out much better than I could ever have dreamed. Whether I’m working around the corner or on the other side of the planet he’s more often than not with me and I feel safer for it. He always has his hand out – but to hold mine, not just to grab the cash.
My career began to pick up. The Mole had won a huge audience and its success and my honesty on screen hadn’t gone unnoticed in the US, where reality TV was booming. Among the many offers I received was VH1’s Surreal Life, which had built a big fan-base and was looking forward to its third series. The show was a little bit like a grander version of Celebrity Big Brother. Eight celebrities were picked to live in a luxurious house with a well-stocked bar in the Hollywood Hills. There was the usual assortment of challenges and activities to keep the participants busy but unlike Big Brother, there was no obligation to do anything. That sounded just perfect and it was a good excuse for getting back to LA: I might have left the city 20 years earlier but I still felt like we had a long-distance relationship and my love remained. The financial rewards were also attractive as I needed to make up for everything I’d given up in the divorce.
You Only Get One Life Page 18