You Only Get One Life (22 page)

I'd always dismissed people who turn to suicide as weak and selfish. It was the ultimate act of betrayal and I was very scared. My doctor suggested I get specialist help for the alcoholism and gave me a number of a good psychiatrist. I knew that what the doctor had advised made perfect sense, but when I got home I soon started drinking again and the contact details went in the bin unused.

The doctor meant well and it was my fault for not listening to him, but it was also true that the European medical establishment didn't treat alcohol abuse with the same seriousness as they did in the US. You wouldn't find people so ready to leap up and declare their alcoholism in Switzerland or Italy as their American counterparts. The problem wasn't tackled with the same urgency.

One morning I'd had enough. It was a lousy decision to make, I know, though I could also point at the alcoholism and say it was a sickness and a form of depression. I wasn't thinking straight – even when I wasn't drinking, I was still out of my mind. It would have been an awful thing to do even if I hadn't had kids but when you're in that place then it all makes sense. Suicide is the most selfish and disgusting thing one can do but I was going to try it. And it's important that I say it now, as much as it hurts me, because it's the truth.

I
  was in the bathroom upstairs at Morcote, gazing at myself in the mirror. Lonely and filled with pain, I looked as unhappy as I felt. I wanted to look away from that miserable face, but I didn’t. The kids were not at home and Raoul was working on his cars. Little was left of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the bathroom table. The sounds from the outside world were distant.

I had taken a bottle from the bathroom cabinet. It had been about half-full with the pills that rattled into the glass. I looked out of the window over the lake and thought
That’s it. Life is over
. I hated how things had been going over the last six or seven years. The dream house was now a prison; big, empty and full of bad karma, but I had stayed here. I forced myself to like it, the monument to my mission in life of making my marriage work. After things had gone to pieces with Kasper, Sylvester and Mark, this was going to be my family forever – I tried everything to make it work.

I thought about how the kids went to school in Lugano. The town had the cutest little airport from where I often flew for work. We lived in Morcote, an idyllic village of just 200 residents, and my vision was of building my own kind of castle there to keep my children safe. I didn’t want them to be exposed to the sort of scrutiny I faced in the press. Whenever we went on vacation the photographers followed us and the little ones found it very upsetting; they were always begging me to make it stop and I wanted them to live undisturbed at home. I liked being hidden away: I could walk around the garden completely naked if I wanted, we could take the kids and dogs into Morcote where nobody bothered us. It would have been the perfect family life.

The figure in the bathroom mirror already looked like one of the walking dead. Guilt had nagged away at me for not being able to maintain that perfect family; I had been trapped. I took the glass and swallowed all the pain-killing pills one by one, then I glanced in the mirror: that weak, defeated alcoholic. I felt so sorry for myself – that’s being an alcoholic for you. We all have endless reserves of self-pity, we really do. You can’t see it when you’re in the middle of it but alcoholics really are the worst people, such bad news; I knew that this person wasn’t really me but I didn’t have the strength to change things.

I hadn’t planned that this would be the day. The urge came over me very quickly and I was dressed as usual in the loose-fitting tracksuit I wore around the house. I had probably just gone to the bathroom and decided there and then to do it: there had been no preparation for this moment. At home I never wore make-up or shoes in
contrast to the tight-fitting dresses and stilettos I was known for in public – my work uniform.

Birds lived in huge numbers around the shores of the lake and I could hear the flutter of wings, probably coming from the eaves of a nearby house. I was almost at the end now.
Do everyone a big favour
, I thought,
and disappear. Don’t be a burden to the children, your mother or your girlfriends
. Deep within the alcoholic haze I knew I had made the right decision: this was what I wanted and for the first time in a long while, I thought, I had done a good thing. I thought of Marilyn Monroe – she did the same thing and she died, and that was okay.

I hadn’t written a suicide note, though I knew I didn’t want to have people singing at the service. If I was cremated, should the ashes be scattered over the lake here or taken back to my childhood home in Rødovre? I just didn’t care. There was an evil character inside me, whispering that none of it mattered:
You’re a bad person. Nobody likes you, you’re not doing anything useful on this planet so you might as well get on with it! And you don’t have the strength to fight, so just check out
. The voice was speaking the truth. The only thing that was wrong was the way I had been living and what I’d done to my family. Was it really harder to get a divorce, check into rehab and, as they say, get my act together? Yes. Much better to throw myself in the lake – or it would have been if I didn’t shiver at the thought of the cold water. Pills and alcohol were best because I’d just get comfortable and go to sleep.

I closed my eyes briefly and saw my children: they deserved so much better than anything I had to offer them.
Quietly, I said my goodbyes to them. The bedroom was nearby and it had a panoramic view of the lake; the radio was on in there and I could hear Celine Dion singing ‘A New Day Has Come’. Her crystalline voice floated from the speakers and found its way to the bathroom, but it seemed to be coming at me from much further away. She sang of the greatest happiness in the world. But there would be no new day for me. This was to be my last morning on the planet.

My consciousness was just about hanging on and I felt increasingly relaxed. I could still taste the many cigarettes, the sweetness of the Jack Daniel’s, but I couldn’t remember what day it was although I thought the kids were in school. There was a slight sense of disappointment that things weren’t going a bit faster, but at last I wasn’t feeling any pain in my body, just a little flutter in my stomach. Now I was numb – no more worries, no more guilt, no more lies. The world lurched and my legs went from under me. I saw the woman in the mirror disappear and I smiled as I went: I was happy. And I was thinking of Marilyn again – maybe this was what she felt too.

I
t was like coming out of the other side of a black hole. Soundless. I couldn’t see more than vague shapes and there were no smells. I was spinning around and around. Pain. A phantom pain, just as if I was beginning to feel again. And then sound. What was happening? Something was happening. The prison of darkness was smashed by a painful brightness, razor blades of light. This had to be death and I felt happy.

But why then was I hearing voices? I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I started to realise that the light wasn’t a celestial glow from God but a welcome back to the misery of earthly existence. My Lugano doctor was shining a light into my eyes and asking me something about how I felt. I answered with quiet little ‘yes’ and ‘no’s. Abruptly he brought his mouth close to my ear and his breath was the first thing I really felt since regaining consciousness, its warmth and then his tone when he spoke, reassuring and friendly.

‘Was that a suicide attempt?’ he asked me softly.

Good question. Anyone attempting suicide in Switzerland had to be logged by law and spend time in a psychiatric hospital. All I cared about at that moment was where the boys were and whether it could really be true that I hadn’t managed to get rid of Raoul. Crying, foggy, I had a few words with the doctor and I remember signing some paperwork.

I lay my head back on the pillow, closed my eyes and thought how good it would be not to have to open them again. My doctor went on to report that I’d taken an accidental overdose, but as the darkness closed over me again I thought how both in intent and in fact I had made a very deliberate attempt to die. But here I was again and nothing had changed: my nightmare wasn’t over.

The first few days after I woke up in hospital were incredibly exhausting, both physically and mentally. I had to reconcile myself to the choice I’d made to end my problems in the way I had. I hadn’t been able to get to grips with life and I wanted it all to go away, but I came to understand that I didn’t want to die after all and that I was desperate to make a change in myself, I just didn’t know what.

It was about a month later that I began to feel the first glimmer of inspiration. The distance between my inner picture of myself and the real Gitte was vast; that knowledge gave me the strength to try to find myself again.

These days I do regular reality checks to ensure I make healthy choices. It sounds banal, I’m sure, but in the past I didn’t think about myself enough – it was all about my
husband, schools, money, friends and agents. Of course, I still think about all the different aspects of my life, but now I’m always careful to include myself in the reckoning. I’m also much better about keeping in contact with my girlfriends – I always make time to check in with them and see how they’re doing. I’ve realised you can’t do anything for anyone else if you can’t look after yourself – that was the bottom line and it’s true for all of us.

But when my wonderful doctor left me alone for the first time in the hospital bed and I stared up at the ceiling, I still thought that suicide was the way out. Thank God I was too tired to do anything about it then. I had no idea of what lay ahead for me and if someone had told me that day was the beginning of a new, happy life, I would have laughed at them.

I
n the immediate aftermath of my release from hospital, I remained depressed, lonely and unhappy. I still couldn’t end my relationship with Raoul and we never spoke about what had happened. Meanwhile, I continued to drink to numb myself against reality and soon I was working as hard as ever.

Raoul was to race the Paris to Dakar Rally, which began on New Year’s Eve. My assignments included television appearances, speeches, interviews, club openings – once again, whatever I could. Miserable as I felt, I still put on a great Christmas for the children, though.

It’s a Danish tradition to cut out Christmas hearts, bake cookies and hand-make nougat and marzipan confections: I used to do that with my own grandparents, decorating the tree and listening to seasonal music. We would put the sweets we’d made into the hearts and hang them on the tree. And Raoulino got very excited when we did that together,
pointing out his hearts and telling everyone, ‘I made that!’ I had a special present ready for whoever of the boys made the prettiest heart – they loved the thought of an extra gift before the big day.

That year was a particularly good one because the rally lasted a month so I knew I had time on my own in my house. I still remember the bubbling feeling of euphoria when I left Raoul in Marseille, France, where he was due to meet the other drivers. He was happy too. I turned my car around, hit the accelerator and sped back to Switzerland. Now I had my space, my children and all that time for myself; it was like being reborn – all the pressure was off. It was while Raoul was away that I got a phone call out of the blue: it was another one of those unexpected opportunities which was to change the course of my life.

The caller was a producer from a major Italian TV station called RAI2, who wanted me to take part in Italy’s version of a reality show,
The Mole
. Contestants won money through completing physical challenges while working out which one of them had been planted as a spy to sabotage their efforts. I hadn’t heard of reality TV back then and wouldn’t have cared less if I had – all I knew was it was to start just as the Paris to Dakar ended and that meant I would be away from Raoul even longer.

The show was straightforward. Contestants didn’t know each other beforehand and would share their lives for a minimum of 60 days in a Mexican location. Half an hour of footage would be shown daily on RAI2, supplemented by four hours of live coverage in a primetime slot on Sundays. It was a big production for the station and it was a big
opportunity for me, which would open my career out in a whole new direction. My instincts told me this was going to be good, though it would be sad to be apart from the boys for so long. I said ‘Yes’ there and then, without discussing money or contracts – I was elated to be offered a job that lasted that long.

My gut feeling would prove to be right. This would not only give me the boost I needed to bring my marriage to an end but in the longer term it was through reality TV that I got to work through my demons and the alcoholism that was destroying me. Many people rubbish reality TV, but I can honestly say it saved my life. I don’t think there’s anyone else on this planet who can say they went through such a profound physical and psychological transformation as I did in front of the cameras. The show would be the tool to pull myself out of the quicksand into which I’d been sinking for so long. I went on to live my life in front of the cameras and I can’t think of another woman who was such a candid witness to her many adventures and mistakes. It was healthy, it motivated me and it all started from that one telephone call. My one question was ‘Can we smoke?’ They told me I could.

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.