What it Was Like: (from her memoir: MY PARENTS WENT THROUGH THE HOLOCAUST AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT)

I wasn’t crammed in a boxcar headed for Auschwitz. I came later. I grew up in a bungalow in Canada watching Captain Kangaroo and eating Alpha-bits. Yet, if you and I were to speak for five minutes, I’d work into the conversation that my parents are Holocaust survivors.

I didn’t go through the Holocaust; it went through me.

And it likes to talk about itself. I don’t try to bring it up, it comes up—like bad clams. Just the sight of a swastika gives me a hot flash. Its like swallowing horseradish.

My education began early. I didn’t know from The Cat in the Hat. My bedtime stories were The Aunt in the Camp. The bogeyman under the bed wore a Nazi uniform and spoke German.

Today, I strive to be spiritual, but I have intrusive thoughts. On vacation in Maui, I’m floating in the calm ocean and Adolf Hitler snorkels by. Water is seeping through his mustache into the dive mask. I’ll give him a final solution! I grab him and beat him up with my flipper. My body’s on vacation, my resentment’s at work.

I have money. I have everything, including bouts of hysteria. Having everything doesn’t take away the nothing. When Im not crying, I look confident. People say, You were an obese, alcoholic, drug addict with agoraphobia? Impossible! You’re an aerobics instructor! I take that as a challenge, like they don’t believe me. I wasn’t given credibility as a child, and now I’m not sure if even I believe me.

I had faulty heir conditioning. My mother told me, I’m mad and its your fault. I had no reason to think she’d lie, so I assumed I was a bad girl. It’s something I learned along with chewing, and like chewing, I do it automatically . . . and often. Food? I have issues. I floss before getting on the scale.

I’ve always wanted people to know my story, and I also worry they won’t be interested. I wormed my way out of the womb with an attitude, Hel-l-o-o!! Does anyone care what I just went through?! People say I feel too much. I say, That’s what narcotics are for.

Drugs: I’ve done them with TV stars. And before appearing on game shows. And in limos with foreign men. I’ve had an amazing amount of adventures considering I spent most of my time butt-melding with the couch, remote in one hand, Fritos in the other. Best explanation I have is, you have more time when you don’t cook.

I need people, and people suck. Meaning, I get sucked into them the way Star Trek’s ship, The Enterprise, got sucked into menacing planets by powerful tractor beams. I’ve been drawn to people who’ve vaporized me. Batterers. Blamers. Boozers. Bigamists. This is who I find, and I don’t even know I’m looking. It’s the Attractor Factor. Resist the pull? Like Scotty told Kirk, I don’t have the power! My pattern of gravitating toward chaos was programmed in me when I was just a small enterprise with no protective force shield.

I formed a personality rather than a person. I try to figure out the right way to act, what’s expected by the important people, the real people, like the ones on TV. Meanwhile, I don’t focus on faces. Floors, yes. I can tell you about linoleum.

The years march on like Germans into Poland. My own war to wake up disturbs my sleep. But I can’t risk waking up. Not yet . . . I’m nearly a person; I’m close to becoming real; I’m almost living. But really, I’m just having a near-life experience.

I have one question: Can I ever feel as good sober as I did on Quaaludes?

(I can tell you now, 24 years clean and sober, I’m on a much better high, one that doesn’t kill you. It’s called being present.)