Chapter 14 Right Action for Women
FOURTEEN
RIGHT ACTION FOR WOMEN
I’M CURSED. IT’S A feeling I’ve had my entire life.
Something good happens and then: boom. As I think you can tell by now, I am a big disavower of myself.
I wonder how my life would have gone if that hadn’t been the case.
I guess I’ll never know, but I like to think there’s an alternate me somewhere unburdened by this self-doubt.
I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff, about to jump into something amazing, but I never quite fall—instead, I tend to get slimed, like I’m on Nickelodeon.
I think this feeling, as with so many across the years, dates back to being thirteen and my friend saying, “You’re doing it.
” What she said changed the trajectory of my entire life, of how I view myself and process what happens to me. I’m good enough, but I’m not great.
Always, that little voice in the back of my head jeers at me, saying, “It’s all going to come crashing down.
” As soon as I feel myself accepting goodness, I find myself pushing it away.
I can’t get too close to the good because when I get there, I’m going to be disappointed.
That’s how it feels. I’ve been nominated five times for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: in 2008 and again in 2009 for my role as Samantha Newly in Samantha Who?
, and three times for my role as Jen Harding in Dead to Me.
I’ve never won. I never expected to. I was complacent about the fact that I was always a bridesmaid.
Fuck, though, I would have liked to win.
But this fits my soul perfectly. I have never thought I deserved anything good in any case, so not winning an Emmy is just how it is and how I expect life to go.
The question of intention has, in recent years, come to haunt me.
Because the universe doesn’t know your intention—it only knows where your attention is.
And where has my attention always been? The negative.
Have I brought all this on myself ? Have I created all of this?
Have I been walking around expecting the worst all the time, only to be proven right over and over again because the universe answered my energy?
There were many times when I was getting dressed by myself and caught a glimpse of my body in the mirror, and invariably I’d hear myself complain out loud: “God, your boobs are getting saggy. I hate them.” And then I’d catch myself and say, “Don’t say that.
Don’t say that. Don’t say that.” But it was too late.
I was so afraid for so many years that I would have something wrong with me: my legs, my back, anything that meant I had to stop performing, stop moving. And now here I am, forced to sit still.
Before Dead to Me, Samantha Who? was my favorite job I’d ever had. I loved being with everyone on that show. But it was hard work. I was in almost every scene, which meant I sometimes worked twenty hours a day.
The most fun nights that we ever had on that set were Fraturdays, when Fridays turned into Saturdays and on we worked. At some point during those nights, you’d see everyone from stage managers to talent carrying coffee cups, only there wasn’t coffee in the cup, if you get my drift.
One week, Melissa McCarthy, Jennifer Esposito, and I were in a car being towed.
We were supposed to be kind of loopy in the scene, but we barely had to act.
Our sound guy, Steve Morantz, kept rolling during a turnaround, and somewhere there is footage of the three of us laughing our asses off like crazy people.
I’m sure we looked like total loonies, three women stuck in a car cackling long after “Cut” was called.
(We were drunk. This was not a regular occurrence, you understand, but Fraturdays could be very tough to get through.) But who doesn’t want to laugh until their stomach hurts with Melissa and Jennifer?
It’s one of the best memories of my life.
Melissa is uncommonly funny. Her role on Samantha Who?
sometimes felt thankless because it was small.
Sometimes I’d say, “Come on, guys, give her something. You don’t even know what a gem you have.
” One day she invited us all to see her in the Groundlings.
I’ve never seen anything like it since. The audience was laughing so hard that sound stopped coming out of our mouths.
We almost wanted it to stop so we could just catch our breath.
I felt like I was going to have an aneurysm.
I remember saying to her, “When the world gets to see what you’re capable of, it’s over.”
Cut to her shitting in a sink in Bridesmaids—“This sink’s a goner!”—and getting an Oscar nomination for it. Told you so.
The first time I had to step back from a television show for my health was during Samantha Who?
As early as 2001, one of my doctors noticed that there was a pattern of cancer in my family.
This was before the medical profession really knew much about mutations in brCA1 and brCA2, the genes that, when they work correctly, suppress tumors.
When they don’t work correctly, well, they don’t suppress shit.
My doctor insisted I start getting mammograms well before the suggested age, which back then was forty, so I started getting tested regularly.
My breasts were too dense for regular testing, and, as the doctor put it, they were also “cyst-y.” He ordered up MRIs for me instead.
The first one I took provided a false positive for cancer in one breast, but two months later the news was bad: the scan had indeed found cancer, this time in the other boob.
There was only one option for me: a double mastectomy.
I was no stranger to cancer by that point in my life; I had lived through my mom having the disease.
DIAGNOSIS
I kinda knew what the diagnosis was going to be.
So much so that I put off calling the doctor back for a few days.
I remember sitting in bed and making that call.
“It’s positive.” My heart was racing, but I had no time to cry.
Just immediately asked what I should do.
What’s the stage? Who do I call? [The doctor] kept saying, “Ductal carcinoma in situ.” I think I asked her five times what the fuck she just said.
In fact Rachel had to call her back a couple of times just to double-check what the fuck she just said.
And to have her reassure me that I wasn’t going to die from this.
She said they remove it and you move on.
Yeah, right. Regardless of what stage or nature your cancer is, you still feel frightened and feel like the walls are closing in on you.
I called my mom and said I had cancer. I couldn’t breathe, and when she got there, I collapsed in her lap.
It was one of the few times through this process I felt mothered by her.
I immediately made changes to my life to try to get ready for whatever was to come, but whatever changes I made, I wasn’t ready to face the truth.
I quit smoking and went on a macrobiotic diet, but still I was told by a breast surgeon that because the cells were “microinvasive,” I’d probably need a double mastectomy.
In early August, my friend Mary Kay, knowing how much I loved to keep a diary, gifted me a brand-new journal ahead of my surgery. She had intuited, rightly, that this was the beginning of a significant and potentially very painful phase of my life, and she wrote a simple but profound inscription.
Christina,
For all of your thoughts, feelings & reflections during this time. Much love.
The following are extracts from that journal, extracts that tell the tale of my lifesaving surgery.
I share them with scant comment, except to say that it’s poignant to me, years later, to see the tiny steps of progress—“Walked to the window,” “Went all the way down to the end of the carpet”—which acted as important signposts in my recovery.
I compare those achievements to how I now face MS, an illness that only ever gets worse, not better.
There are no mileposts of improvement in my current situation.
I have good days and bad days, but I’ll never enjoy good months, good years.
Those kinds of months and years are gone.
It was a hard time in my life, but I’d like to be her now, to keep her company, to borrow some of those tiny steps.
August 2008
DAY ONE
I wasn’t particularly frightened the night before.
At this point it’s all a blur, really. But there is a “get down to business” mode I often snap into when faced with something that is beyond challenging.
Went to the hospital, snuck in through the emergency room.
I could feel the anxiety from everyone except me.
Although I’m sure I was fucking losing it…
I went to pre-op, did the basic shit. Vitals, tons of questions.
Begged for something to calm me. Had [Dr.] Slate draw on me.
All the while I was still in good spirits.
Prayed… then asked for the drugs again, and my dad.
And that’s all I remember. The surgery was about seven hours long.
An earthquake of 5.5 actually went down during my surgery, of course.
Basically I felt NO pain. I was on the drip and Martyn and I watched a documentary.
DAY TWO
Barely remember. All I know is I couldn’t move. I was peeing into a catheter. And I was on the drip. Still won’t look under the gown.
DAY THREE
I think I sat up this day. But really more of the same. Too many visitors.
DAY FOUR
Sat up again. Sponge bath humiliation. So gassy. That was funny!! Walked to the window.
DAY FIVE