The humiliation sunk me deeper and deeper every day.
I quit, a hundred times. In my head I did.
But my marriage was already on the rocks.
I needed the money. I know it sounds wild when famous people say they need money, but accepting one’s fall from grace isn’t so easy.
I hear you wondering, how did the #MeToo movement not come for Dorian Fisher? How sweet to believe that every predator got his day in court, that every victim sleeps at night knowing that justice was rendered. You forget that Dorian wasn’t a rapist. I can’t know for certain of course, but I doubt we’ll hear stories of sordid encounters in hotel rooms, of drugged girls and ripped dresses. Dorian favored emotional violence, the kind that only bruises on the inside. The kind that is so much harder to prove.
To this day, I haven’t seen the movie. Yes, the one that got me so many nominations. The one that put my name on a dozen maps. On the rare occasions I come across a clip from it, or from one of the many interviews I was contractually obliged to give, I still feel the urge to run to the nearest bathroom and empty my gut. And then to reach for the bottle of vodka, the container of pills.
That I will give you: I have been an alcoholic. I have been an addict. I am, I suppose, still those things.
When my husband first brought up the topic of moving out, we fought so hard the walls shook. We ate off plastic plates for days, pretending that I hadn’t broken most dishes we owned. I’m not proud of myself. Of thethreats I made. The things my children heard. I have failed the people around me many times over. I have failed myself just as much.
From there, you can fill in the rest. The divorce papers served on the streets of New York, where paparazzi just happened to know where I was staying. The stories about how even my children can’t stand me. They are teenagers; of course they can’t stand me. My daughter followed around, the nasty rumors about her eating disorder. My heart broken yet again. My spirit shattered.
I swore never again. I would cut Dorian out of my life.
Until he made me an offer I certainly could have refused but couldn’t bring myself to.
My directing debut.
Don’t Be Sad!
Don’t you fucking dare be sad when you have everything, at least on the surface.
I snapped under the weight of decades of, well, I’m scared to put a name on it. If I say abuse, will you remind me that he never laid a hand on me?
Because in the end, I was the violent one.
I was the one who grabbed that fire extinguisher.
I’m not saying I would do it again, given the chance.
But the thing I shouldn’t be telling you, the thought that I most definitely should take to my grave, is that I’m having a very hard time regretting it.
A very,veryhard time.
The Girls
In the end, Odetta had one simple question for us: What would we do now?
She expected no mercy and only hoped to prepare herself.
But to us it wasn’t about mercy. It wasn’t about justice.
In some twisted way, it was about envy.
Despite the ordeal she’d described, all the horrible things Dorian Fisher had done to her, we still wanted what she had. The money, the fame, the success. She’d had a shot at it. And yes, it had turned her life into a despicable mess.
We wanted it anyway.
The end of our lives as nobodies.
That’s what we saw. The opportunity we recognized.
It didn’t all come together at once. It started there: None of us could bring ourselves to walk away.
