7

one step forward, two steps back

I’ve always been someone who enjoys having plenty of alone time, but that was pushed to the limit as my health issues became more unpredictable. I began to close the world out more and more, for fear of another embarrassment, another panic attack, another stomach attack. Just as my career was doing so well, my health was incredibly up and down. When I felt well, I was a vivacious, take-life-by-its-heels type of person, and I loved going out, traveling and having fun. When my health worsened, I became withdrawn, frightened, and depressed, and I felt hopeless. If that wasn’t enough stress, I’d then get mad at myself for letting my health get to me. At that point, I was also becoming disillusioned with my career. I was also becoming disillusioned with the people I was dating, and the people I was surrounded with as well. Everybody seemed to want to be somebody else, instead of just being who they actually were. I was never very good at dating and the truth is, basically all the people I was around were all very into their careers, first and foremost. Of course, I understood this because I’m in the business, too. To have any success, you have to be somewhat self-obsessed. You have to be concerned with how you look, how you act, personally and professionally, what color your hair is, what you should wear to the next event, who you work with, and how you express yourself. It’s all up for constant criticism and judgment, and one wrong move can ruin your career. To really make a career in the business I chose, you have to be ready, willing, and able to drop everything and everyone if that dream job suddenly shows up.

I understand it. I also realized that it’s not an environment that fosters healthy relationships, and the whole notion of constant obsession with myself and my career began to make me very unhappy. I often felt sad beyond words about some of the things I saw and experienced. We all have to face our disillusionments. At the same time, it was the only work I knew how to do, and although it hasn’t been easy, it has been wonderful at times. But the older I got, the more I began to realize that I just wasn’t willing to be that person who would give up everything else to be successful.

This was a tough pill to swallow. All my life, acting was all I’d ever wanted to do, but I was facing the realities of the business, who I was becoming, and the fact that I didn’t know how well they fit together anymore. I longed to do something that could make a difference in people’s lives on a more personal level. I had spent years dedicated to acting and my health woes. I craved giving something back, but I had no idea what or how. I decided I needed some time off. When my friend Joanna suggested that we both desperately needed a vacation, I agreed. Although I was worried about my health and how I would handle it, I loaded up with Imodium, Xanax, crackers, and ginger ale, and we boarded a plane for Italy for some much needed fun.

We spent two amazing weeks wandering around and eating everything and making many Italian friends. Surprisingly, I felt great. My health was what it was, but I felt like just letting it be what it was while trying to enjoy myself regardless—embracing the moment, the food, and the carefree existence, even if it was a little forced at times. I was eating pasta, bread, salad, cheese, fish, meat, everything! The food was so fresh and tasted amazing, like nothing I had been eating in the States. The bread was freshly baked, the pasta was hand-rolled right before eating, the vegetables were freshly picked from gardens, and everything was homemade and real. I had a few minor stomach issues, but nothing like I had at home. I was on a steady supply of Xanax to keep the panic at bay, but I felt better than I had in a long time. But the problem with vacations is that they don’t last forever. As soon as I got back to New York (and back to my regular diet), I felt worse than ever. My stomach flared up again, I became weak, and depression crept back into my life. I went back to the gastroenterologist, who told me that I was too high-strung and nervous, and I needed to meditate. He also thought I might have gotten a parasite while vacationing.

“In Italy?” I asked. We’d stayed in nice places and eaten the freshest foods. A parasite seemed like a reach, but I said okay to the antibiotic he prescribed. (By the way, this is the same doctor who told me, “No antibiotics unless absolutely necessary.” A phantom parasite must have been necessary.)

It frustrated me to no end to feel so sick again because I knew I couldn’t go back to L.A. until I felt better. Frankie Beans was waiting for me in L.A. and I missed him so much. He always brought me a level of comfort I didn’t have with anyone else, and I felt a great need for him at that time in my life. He was the one and only unwavering aspect of my existence. He was comfort and all non-judgmental, unconditional love I needed, in one package, complete with fluffy, wagging tail. He was the one who sat on many a cold bathroom floor with me, and never cared what I was wearing or how I looked or how well my last movie or TV show had done.

In the meantime, as I was recovering, I was on my way to drop off a stool sample at the doctor’s office (isn’t my life glamorous?), and I saw a Bernese mountain dog in the window of a pet store. She was three months old. I walked in, told the owner I’d be back in twenty minutes, and dropped off that sample. It was one of those moments when I thought my life couldn’t get any more embarrassing, so I decided I needed give myself a present, as a way to make up in some small measure for everything I had endured. But she wasn’t that small! To get another pup seemed like a great idea at that moment. If one dog was good, two would be even better, and Frankie Beans could have a companion when I wasn’t around. I could barely walk myself home because I was so weak from all the medications I was on, but somehow I managed to get all twenty pounds of her back to my apartment. I named her Betty Boop. When I was feeling better, Betty Boop and I drove back to L.A., and I introduced the two dogs. They loved each other immediately, and my happiness doubled.

Back in L.A., I began to feel a little bit better. I started going out more, and demanded more of myself. I was determined to take my life back from illness. I started doing more yoga to calm myself down (as everyone kept suggesting), and then I saw another Oprah episode about staying positive and being grateful. I liked this strategy. I was grateful for many things. I tried to remember this every day and incorporate more positivity into my life. I even made a vision board for myself, with images of what I wanted for my future: a true purpose, good health, a loving partner. I felt my constant high-level anxiety beginning to ebb, but I still felt like something was off, just under the surface. Even when nothing was wrong that I could exactly put my finger on, I still felt like something was wrong.

My latest symptom was extreme backaches. I didn’t think this could be related to any of my other issues, but the pain was agonizing. At the same time, I was getting recurring urinary tract infections. I went to doctor after doctor, but all anyone ever came up with was that it must be from bacteria. There was that word again. Bacteria. The word made my skin crawl, and it just didn’t make sense. Where was I contracting all this bacteria? One doctor told me I might have kidney stones since my kidney and liver both seemed inflamed for no apparent reason. The doctor gave me 200 Bactrim and told me to take one a day since I was prone to urinary tract infections. He said to just continue. Forever?

“Forever,” he said. Even though my gastroenterologist had warned me against antibiotics? I took them for a week, then threw them away.

Again, I began to investigate on my own. I incorporated fresh unsweetened cranberry juice and cranberry herbal supplements. I read every self-help book I could find about healing your past, healing through positive thinking, healing in any way, shape, or form. I tried so hard to link my stomach problems, panic attacks, chronic sinus infections, and now, backaches together, but all the books attributed different emotions to each of those things. I couldn’t bring it all together. Where was the common thread? Or was I just born to be broken?

I wanted to change my whole life and start all over again with a new body—one that worked. I thought I could maybe leave the business for a bit, take a break, start over—but at that point, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to do that. I longed to just enjoy life, like I had in Italy. I wanted to be a normal person. Maybe even, dare I say it, find someone to spend my life with? But finding someone to love, who loved me, in this lonely city of Los Angeles was seeming more and more impossible every day.

Then I met someone and accepted a date. I should have noticed the red flags from the beginning—actually, they were more like an entire marching band squad of red flags—but I ignored them because, honestly, I didn’t think the relationship was really going to go anywhere. He was funny, smart, cocky, arrogant, and a master manipulator. I didn’t necessarily find him that attractive, but I figured that I could enjoy his sense of humor and nonsense for a while. One date became two, two dates became four. We had fun, but he also had a mean, cold side. His personality could flip on a dime, but that kind of behavior was familiar to me. I’d spent plenty of time walking on eggshells in my childhood home as well as on certain sets, so I quickly learned my role in the relationship and went forward accordingly.

But the relationship was about him and what he needed, and nothing else. I was a non-issue. I became sidelined from my life, my needs, and my health. I became very sad and I felt very alone, but I stayed in the relationship. It wasn’t all bad all the time, so I figured this was just my lot, and I took the good with the bad, even though the bad was extremely bad. That’s when I discovered cooking and baking.

I FOUND A sense of peace when I was in the kitchen. Food was a comfort to me. In my childhood, food had always brought people together, so at first I used it to please my un-pleasable boyfriend. I cooked for him constantly, in an effort to keep things peaceful, but also in an effort to soothe myself and take my mind off this unhealthy relationship I found myself in. I began to devour cookbooks and cooking and baking magazines, and watched the Food Network incessantly. I made everything from soups to cakes, and even my own pizza. I was so immersed in the whole allure of cooking that I even started checking out culinary schools. I felt peaceful when I was cooking. It was a form of meditation for me.

One day, while I was making some elaborate dinner, I was watching Oprah and one of the guests mentioned that he gave lectures at a place called Agape—at least, that was my understanding of it. I was fascinated by the man, who was full of words I needed to hear at that moment. I thought it might be interesting to go to this place and hear more. I decided to go to Agape. I had no idea that it was a church.

With the relationship getting to be more of a roller coaster and more abusive in my eyes, I set out the next weekend to go to this place called Agape. I arrived at a large auditorium filled with hundreds of people, all waiting for the reverend to speak. The reverend? What had I gotten myself into? Was it some kind of a cult? But as long as I’d driven all that way, I figured I might as well see what it was all about. As I waited for the lecture, or the church service, or whatever it was going to be, I didn’t know what I wanted or needed to hear. I just knew I needed something.

The mass-like lecture began with a song and readings from all different types of books. It wasn’t religious, exactly, but it was positive and inspiring and spiritual. Everyone around me was singing and smiling and looked genuinely happy. It felt unreal to me. I don’t think I’d ever been in the presence of that many happy people at one time. There was a feeling of peaceful energy in the room, and as I looked at the faces around me, the smiles seemed to come from within the people, like their souls were smiling.

Next, the entire auditorium did a meditation together. We were asked to close our eyes and listen to our own breathing and “let it be.” I took a couple of deep breaths. Let it be. Whatever that meant. I opened my eyes and looked around. Everyone was doing it! They were all just sitting quietly, just being. Weird. I expected to see at least a few people looking around or scoffing or rolling their eyes, but no—I was the only one peeking, the only one not absorbed in the moment. I closed my eyes again and took a few more breaths, and said to myself, “Just be, Jennifer. Just be.” Thoughts flew through my brain, and then one nanosecond of huge, blissful, reverberating silence. Silence in my brain was something I had never experienced. I never knew it could exist. I was a thinker and it seemed as though my thoughts were always raring to go. This unexpected moment of pure silence was pure bliss to me. These people definitely knew something I most certainly did not, and I wanted to learn more.

Then the reverend began to talk. He had a joyful demeanor but a no-nonsense way of speaking that I appreciated. This wasn’t religious and it wasn’t New Agey mumbo-jumbo, either. One thing really rang true, and I’ve never forgotten it: “Stop trying to make things the way you want them or the way you perceive they should be. Instead, see things the way they actually are. As ugly and as beautiful. Therein lies your freedom. Therein lies your answer. And let it be.”

Tears began to flow down my cheeks. I didn’t know exactly what that meant fully, but it rang true to me. Let it be. Could I really do that? It sounded so simple, so honest. Not like giving up, but accepting reality for what it was, rather than what I wanted it to be or thought it should be. To stop trying to adjust everything, and just see it for what it actually was. To stop denying and constantly fighting. What a concept—to stop trying and just be who I was and where I was in my life at that point. I had been trying to make everything in my world into something better or different than it really was. My career, my health, my relationship. I decided right then to do nothing about any aspect of my life for awhile. I would just let it be so it could unfold, so I could really look at it and see what was true.

I went home feeling at peace. It was a strange feeling for me. I’m a do-er by nature, but when I got back, all I knew was: Do nothing. Within days, my relationship hit an all-time low, and within a week, it was over. Abruptly, rudely, and with the exact callousness that I’d come to expect from him, but this time, I did nothing but agree to end it. I didn’t fight it, or try to talk him out of it, or try to make it something it wasn’t. Instead of trying to fix him, fix me, fix the relationship, fix my career, instead of trying to label anything or work on anything, I decided to let it be and honestly see what my life really was.

The relationship was a hard one, but I learned many things. It opened up a world of cooking and baking that I didn’t know I loved so much. It also made me painfully aware of how ugly my own self-obsession was. I was up-close-and-personal with one of the most self-obsessed humans you could imagine, and it made me take a good look at myself. I didn’t want to be anything like that, and more than ever, it made me want to find some other purpose in life besides being an actor. This crazy ride also led me to Agape, where I learned the value of meditation, a gift I still carry with me as I still try to practice it every day.

As I moved on with my life, cooking became more than a hobby. It was pure pleasure. I loved nothing more than having five-course dinner parties that went on for hours. I made everything—linguini and clams, spaghetti limone, sausage and pepper heros, zeppolis just like back in Brooklyn, dessert pizzas with Nutella. The act of cooking and serving the food I made to my friends was divine to me. I even considered quitting acting to go to cooking school, but that change seemed too frightening at the time. I began bringing six pounds of pasta to work to serve the crew. I had reclaimed the notion that food was a gesture of friendship and love, and it brought me the community I craved. I still had stomach issues, and they were bad at times, but I refused to let them get in the way.

AGAPE MADE A big difference in the way I handled life. When a good audition opportunity arose, I went to the audition not caring about the outcome, for the first time in my life. I simply did the job at hand, not attached to the result, just letting it be. I did the best reading I could, and I went home. I got the job, playing Andrea Belladonna on the show Samantha Who? with Christina Applegate and Melissa McCarthy, plus a cast of many other wonderful people! I started my new job, and I loved my cast mates. We spent much of the workday laughing, and that felt good. I was still sleeping through lunch breaks, but it felt okay, and when I got home, I filled the hours with cooking.

The show went on break, I went back to Italy—and my body went haywire again, with excruciating back pain and a swollen abdomen. I went back to the doctor, who suggested maybe I’d contracted another parasite. Really? No way. He sent me to a back specialist, who said nothing was wrong with my muscles, but he did think the nerve endings in my fingers and legs were reacting too slowly. He ran electrical currents through my hands and legs to test them, then gave me a prescription for muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories, and told me to hang in my closet, or on some scaffolding on the street, to relax my lower back.

Really? This is what passes for advanced medicine? From an expensive Park Avenue doctor? Hang out on the street, on some scaffolding? “Oh, don’t mind me, officer, I have a prescription!” Seriously. That’s just great, I thought. Just great.

I started the meds he gave me, and they knocked me out. By the end of the evening, I was back in the ER. Between the electric shocks and the drugs, my system was freaking out. I was given an IV and told my liver was inflamed again. Then they sent me home. Somehow, I managed to get back to work the next day.

My sinus infections descended again—and they just kept getting worse. My eyes were so swollen and my skin was so yellow that it was becoming a real problem at work. My wonderful makeup artist on the show and friend, Anne, and I would often commiserate about how horrible it all was. She would pump me up with a lot of pink blush, which always helped me look more alive.

But how long could I go on like this? An actress I knew from a previous job had been fired for looking too old for a part, all due to the dark, puffy circles underneath her eyes and the wrinkles around them. What kind of world was this, where the condition of your eyes supersedes your talent? It’s a fate every woman in the business has to face, but it was all too much for me to just forget or brush off as “business as usual.” And the fact that such a thing could happen to this wonderful actress scared me. I was tired of it all, and when I got yet another sinus infection, my entire face swelled up and my eyes looked like I hadn’t slept in a year. As I stared at my puffy, dark-circled eyes, I didn’t look good, but it wasn’t about vanity. I felt horrible. When these sinus infections took hold, it felt as though my entire head was in a vice, and I couldn’t even think straight. I finally broke down and went back to another medical doctor. When he saw me, he insisted I have a CT scan immediately.

It showed that I had a deviated septum and the bridge of my nose was so small that even slight inflammation would cut off breathing and get infected if not cleared. That sounded reasonable, but what was causing the inflammation in the first place? The doctor didn’t have an answer. With an absolute straight face, he said he wanted to drill holes through my eyebrows right near the bridge of my nose to ease the pressure, then correct the deviated septum. I stopped listening after that. This guy was not going to take apart my face in some sort of Frankenstein operation.

Benadryl became my new best friend, and I also discovered that Preparation H could reduce under-eye swelling. I added them to my bag of tricks, but I was only dealing with the symptoms. What the hell was the underlying cause? Then I noticed that my hair was falling out. It was extremely dry and fragile. I assumed it must be from all the styling they were doing to me on the show. The hair girl suggested that the show buy me a wig, but production wouldn’t pay for it, so I finally convinced them to cover half, and I paid for the rest myself. It made life easier. I just had to throw on the wig and not have to deal with the handful of straw that my hair had become. In retrospect, it was horrible, but at the time I was too unwell to care.

My hair wasn’t the only thing drying up and blowing away. My skin was flaking off in patches, and I was feeling more and more tired. The depression was creeping back in and life seemed impossibly difficult. My ENT recommended a therapist, but I never went. I just didn’t have the energy. I went to work, laughed with my friends, slept during lunch, put my wig on, covered my yellow skin and the dark swollen circles under my eyes, hid the scaly peeling as well as I could, then went home at the end of the day to collapse.

One day on set in the middle of shooting a scene, I felt a pop and a bit of pain, and then I felt something in my mouth. I spit in my hand. There was what looked like a piece of bone, or a tooth. I turned to Melissa, who was in the scene with me.

“Did I just lose a tooth?” I held it out for her to see.

She smiled and looked frightened at the same time. She had become a dear friend and knew my health struggles. “I think so,” she said. She put her hand on my arm. “Honey, something’s really wrong here.”

“You think so?!” I practically screamed. I’d had it. I went home that day and was rushed right into a dental surgeon who veneered all my top front teeth in two days so I could go back to shooting. Thank goodness shooting was nearly done because I needed a break in the worst way.

When we finished shooting the season, I hit the bed and stayed there for an entire week. I couldn’t move. I was so tired, so unwilling to even try. I could feel yet another sinus infection coming on, the third in one month, and then I noticed a lump on my neck. I was having brain fog that rendered me unable to think clearly about anything. I felt out-of-this-world weird. Nothing made sense. I was also losing my ability to stand. My knees would just give out without any warning.

I was losing my ability to stand. I took myself back to the ENT and he examined the growing lump on my neck. He said he honestly didn’t know what it was. He put me on another round of antibiotics and a prescription to see yet another general practitioner, passing me along to someone else. I remember thinking: What for? Truly, what for? I’d been begging and pleading and researching and screaming for help for years on end, and nothing had come of it except a future of baldness and toothlessness and crippling fatigue. Nothing was making sense to me. My fingers probed the lump on my neck. I probably had cancer. It must be cancer, or he would know what it was. Cancer wasn’t his area, and he didn’t want to tell me. He wanted to send me to someone who could diagnose it and break the news that I was dying.

I didn’t care. I had no illusions that this general practitioner would be any different. I made the appointment anyway, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to disagree. On the eve of going to the new doctor, I had one of my worst panic attacks ever. The scariest part was that nothing provoked it. I wasn’t on a plane, or in a tunnel, or on an elevator, or in a crowd, or doing anything scary at all. I was just sitting on my own couch in my own apartment, watching television, and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I slid to the floor. I nearly called the ambulance. Thankfully, my assistant was with me and helped me to get back on the sofa. She said I would be all right. I didn’t believe her. I was not, and would never be, all right. Nobody had an answer for me. The next doctor would be like all the others. I was probably going to die this way because whatever this was, this insidious thing that plagued me, it was winning. Jackie took me to the doctor the next day. My visit lasted an hour or two, and I was told to expect the results of my blood work after the weekend. I expected nothing, but hoped for everything.