Celebrity Detox

by Rosie O'Donnell

  I was writing her the truth, from my heart. I felt I saw her slowly becoming more real. Well no, not slowly, suddenly. She spoke over her IFB. Plus she had said, on the same show, that she was a binger. You can’t get much more real than that. It hurt to hear.

  Which is why I wrote, right after that, “Elisabeth. I love you. I will protect you.” I knew as soon as I wrote it, it would throw her over the edge. “Elisabeth, I love you and I will protect you.”

  I sat there for a second and stared at the words. I imagined her receiving them. She would feel happy, she would feel loved, and she would also feel lost. Those words, I knew, would be too much for her, too raw and sudden. She wouldn’t know what to do with my feeling of love, which I find odd, because she is a Christian and all Jesus taught was love, but there it is. Should I send this message? And then I did.

  And sure enough, for a few days Elisabeth was shy around me, and then the shyness passed and we continued to have our regular run-ins. She continued to appall me with her almost glib comments about torture, and who is right and who is wrong, but the feeling of baseline love stayed. I have always seen inside Elisabeth the artist, the girl who can paint gorgeous pictures, and the athlete, strong arms, strong legs, swift runner, captain. I swear, I heard a slight shift to her voice, a resonance that wasn’t there before. I told her I loved her and not long after that she took out her IFB, and hasn’t worn it since. She’s speaking on her own now. She has her singular voice. I consider this one of my year’s major achievements.

  Joy followed. Elisabeth took out her IFB and then so did Joy. And there was a softness to Barbara that had not been there before. Or maybe the softness was between us, at the intersection where we crashed, and were wounded, and then slowly, bandaged and infinitely more cautious, approached again.

  Because that is what happened. The conflict came to a boiling point and stripped us of our pretense. In my blowup with Barbara I learned that I too have pretense. I had never shown her before my rage, or my fear, and I had never admitted to her what she meant to me, as a maybe-mother. We collided in air, on air, and the force of it tore the armor from us. What I felt, I will never forget. I know now that Barbara’s wounded-ness is very deep. Looking at Barbara after our makeup room fight, I was reminded of seeing inside Kelli the day Viv was born. The cream-colored skin was carved open to reveal the wet organs all veined and incredible. Your jaw drops at what lies inside. It is far too much to touch.

  Something happens to two people who have been in a terrible fight; an intimacy develops. And all the more so if the fighters are not married, and are, on a day-to-day basis, not even close. A married fight, even an unusually brutal one, eventually fades back into the background of all the other hurts, but a fight with a colleague, it is like finding a brilliant ruby gem in a desert. It sits there, bright against the beige background. It becomes a point of almost purity. We will likely never speak of it again, this brief visibility.

  But its effects, those remain obvious, at least to me, and to her as well. We are co-owners, after all, of this gem. “For my birthday,” I said one day soon after Elisabeth took out her IFB. “For my birthday I would like to have an all-Broadway show.”

  And Barbara gave that to me, happily. It made me happy. I know she knows we have something there between us, sisters, mothers, daughters. The betrayal is the gem. How odd. It hurts to hold such a thing.

  Ruthie, my Kabbala instructor, scolded me recently. “You, Rosie,” she said in that Yiddish accent she has. “You, Rosie, you say you don’t care about being famous, you don’t care about your trophies, you let your children paint them, you hate your money and your fame, oh really? You, Rosie, are not honest with yourself. You love your money and your fame. If you really hated it, or didn’t care, you would stay on The View, you would keep your small spot, but here you go, driven for a bigger thing, bigger lights, you learned nothing.”

  Ouch. But Ruthie’s right. In some ways, The View was too small for me. As an artist, I feel I have the right to strive for more, more freedom of expression, for sure, but of course there’s an element of something else in that striving too. More money. More attention. One must fight against those impulses. One must learn when enough is enough.

  The View allowed me many things. It allowed me a measure of freedom I didn’t have before. It allowed me to be a mother to my children. It allowed me sick days if I needed them. It allowed me a four-day workweek, school pickups, some time to paint. It allowed me a few vacations a year, but most important, it was, for better or worse, a team. I was not my own show. I was sharing the camera with three other women, and that can be less lonely, and sometimes more fun.

  Part of growing up, of growing old, is learning when to give up the wheel. At some point, you need to realize you shouldn’t even approach that intersection on your own. I don’t think I’m near that point yet; my timing’s still good, my hearing excellent. But it never hurts to practice. And if a part of that practice means lending Barbara an arm to lean on as she makes room in the driver’s seat, helping her see she can’t always see as well as she once could, and shouldn’t be forced to anyway, then that might even be a small honor.

  And yet, for all The View gave me, it also took its toll. In the end, it helped me to see that I need to find my own space, in cyberspace perhaps, a place where I can carve my own segments, where words are free, even if their repercussions aren’t.

  What I’ve learned from being a part of a corporation like ABC, is that you can’t be really free. You need to edit what you say on air because the corporation cares; they have sponsors; they have advertisers. The corporation shapes your corps, your body, and the danger is that you’ll eventually become a corpse. What I want for myself in the future is both connection and singularity, and it is this paradox, or contradiction, that may form the core of who I am, and fuel my work even as it confuses me. I’d like to be part of a team, yes, I would. But I’d also like to be radically alone, setting the standards, in charge and charging, defining and describing my own space, setting every rule and then breaking every rule I set, until I get tired. Until I get lonely. And then I want to go home. And then I want something simpler. Until I feel stifled by the sweetness and the strictures, and then I want my air back. It is hard, wanting your cake and eating it too. You can get fat that way. But, wow, the dreams you dream, the concoctions you cook, the breadth and depth of the banquet. I have been blessed.

  When I was a child, my mother loved the two Bs: Barbra and Broadway. We played Streisand on the phonograph and heard her voice swell in our small suburban home. My mother died, and someday so will I. But I have her in my memory, and in the way I live my life, the things I love, and long for. Sometimes, when I go to see a Broadway show, I imagine my mother sitting next to me; she would be old now, in her seventies, but age doesn’t dull the thrill you feel when the curtain opens and the chorus begins. Broadway is a street that goes on and on, a kind of infinity, the show that never stops. And that is why my mother loved it, and why I do too.

  The season has ended and I think the hardest part is over. Just the other day, Barbara asked me if Kel and I would like to see the newest Broadway show in town, all three of us, together. The truth is, Kel and I had already seen the show, but what did that matter? There was something shy, and soft, in the way Barbara asked me. Might I turn her down? Might I say no? Might I stand up, scare her, walk away?

  From The View I will walk away; but from Barbara, I know I won’t. Out of this year many things have emerged, and most of them in five years will be utterly inconsequential, celebrity gossip, perhaps even forgotten. But one thing I think will remain the same, will remain solid, and that is the fact of a friendship formed, a tentative, testy, fretful friendship forged in both betrayal and a common core of hurt. My producer, Janette, told me that Barbara held my hand on the first day of The View’s new premiere last September—it seems so long ago—held my hand as we walked out onto the stage, and the audience cheered, hello, America.

  Very little is
for sure. The curtain’s closing now. We’re headed home. Picture this, if you can. The camera clicks. I am holding her hand as we go.

  Blog 6/21/07

  endings

  i dont read ur stupid blog

  u r insulting me

  what will people think

  goodbye is never easy

  a senior in highschool

  its sunny and i wanna stay home

  be done

  move on

  remember the drama

  yearbook signing

  with bubble letters

  and perfect hearts

  dont ever change

  i will miss u in homeroom

  have a good summer

  keep in touch

  most people dont

  its how life works

  in the moment only

  fully alive

  amy winehouse inspires me

  get her cd

  music is essential

  defining decades

  eltons daniel

  came out the summer my mom died

  stoney silence

  in the station wagon

  five fingers

  in a hand

  aunt minnies ring

  a family

  a fist

  gotta kill the questions

  for a while

  the end is always rocky

  one must focus

  2 nite

  kels 40th

  loved ones arrived and ready

  to celebrate all she is

  weenie n jackie

  so laughter is assured

  cheers

  all

  All of Rosie’s net profits from this book are be-

  ing donated to Rosie’s Broadway Kids charity (http://www.rosiesbroadwaykids.org). For more information on Rosie O’Donnell and her chari-

  ties, go to rosie.com.