The next scene I remember is crying on the floor of a bathroom in my father’s house. I’d hit a wall with my physical ailments. I couldn’t think straight. I was overwhelmed and confused. I couldn’t figure out how to do the simplest things, like make a phone call, take a shower, or make myself something to eat—let alone try to organize Christmas gifts for my friends and family. For fucksake, I didn’t even know how to go to sleep. And all I wanted was to go to sleep. I felt as if I was falling apart.

  My dad came into the huge bathroom. I’d been complaining about hurting and not feeling well for a long, long time. I hadn’t had an outburst in a while but I could feel one welling up in me like lava in a little volcano. He kept asking, “Ally, please, what can I do to help you, honey? Can I run you a bath? Get you a massage? Make you some food? Just tell me what I can do to help you.”

  “Those things don’t work,” I said. “Call and get me some weed. The only thing that works is weed.”

  I think it was then that my dad started to believe that I was a major drug addict, which only made me more furious.

  “You just don’t listen!” I screamed.

  I then had a brilliant idea. Back in high school, post-9/11, I’d gone to see a healer and recorded all my sessions with her. I still had the recordings. I walked out of the bathroom and put the audiotape from my healing sessions into the sound system of my dad’s house and turned the volume way up so he could hear them. This way he would believe that I really was sick and not addicted to drugs. I thought if he heard it from the healer’s mouth he would believe me.

  I didn’t know I had Lyme disease, I was just searching for some cause for how bad I felt. I knew multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia were not the correct diagnoses. I don’t know how I knew, but I just did. There were too many missing pieces and too little clarity around the blood tests and treatments. Some of my family members had come back from the Thanksgiving weekend in Mustique with parasites. It certainly would have made sense that I’d had one, considering how I felt. I kept saying, “There are bugs in me, there’s something foreign living inside of me.” I felt as though my stomach were eating itself all the time. I would eat a plate of food and feel as if I had eaten absolutely nothing, another typical result of Lyme disease.

  With the healer’s voice still echoing through my father’s house, I left and went over to my mom’s house across the street. In the midst of this insanity, I was still experiencing some kind of psychic breakthrough. I called some of my friends in Greenwich and invited them to my mom’s. I remember talking a mile a minute to them on the phone. I was so anxious to tell them about the revelations I was having.

  If you asked me today what those revelations were, I don’t think I’d be able to tell you. I do remember the basic theme of them, however—truth. I remember it being of absolute and paramount importance that a person accept the truth of who she is and not hide behind any façade.

  At one point I felt like I was channeling Bob Marley and speaking in a singsong Rasta accent. I really didn’t know anything about Bob Marley, except for a few of his popular songs, but suddenly I thought I did. I was also carrying around spiritual books—the one by Mother Teresa and The Power of Now, which my mother had given me over the years—and pine needles in my pocket. I’d rub and inhale them—the scent seemed to help my nausea.

  I thought fans from the television show were trying to get to me in my mother’s house. The only people I really trusted were her security guards. They were regular guys who didn’t buy into all the materialism bullshit. I didn’t go anywhere without them. Even when I had to go to the bathroom I’d ask one of them to stand outside the door. I still couldn’t sleep, so they’d stay up all night with me. In the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep in my mother’s house, I’d sit in the living room with the guards, smoking cigarettes and reading Tarot for them. I didn’t have real Tarot cards, so I used a regular deck of cards. It wouldn’t have mattered if I were reading bar coasters. The clarity I had into their lives astounds me still.

  You must know I am not claiming to be some incredible psychic. It’s scary to share the truth of what happened to me during that time. I can’t understand why and what happened exactly, but I do know that it sure as hell happened. At the time, what came out my mind and mouth were so uncontrollable, and I didn’t have time to process or slow down what was going on. I was flooded with these thoughts and insights and I wasn’t making sense half the time. I was not in my right mind enough even to scare myself with the way I was behaving.

  In the next scene, on Christmas Eve, I decided I needed to go into New York City. I knew I wouldn’t be able to drive because the task just seemed so overwhelming, so I talked my mother’s boyfriend and one of her assistants into driving me.

  In the car, I called just about everyone I’d known for a length of time who lived in New York. Most of them didn’t pick up; the ones who did asked why I wasn’t home with my family like they were on Christmas Eve.

  It was on this drive that I ended up in the church. I made my mother’s boyfriend stop at St. Patrick’s, the Catholic church in Bedford Village, New York, where we used to go. I remember that I was wearing a Marc Jacobs blood-orange mod coat, flared Levi jeans, and red, orange, and navy blue Adidas sneakers, with my hair in two huge dreads, and still carrying the Mother Teresa book in my hand and the pine needles in my pocket. When I was a child, I loved the smell of Christmas trees; maybe the pine needles also reminded me of a time when everything in my life felt safe and good. Now I was standing in the middle of Midnight Mass, which should have been called Midnight Madness in my case, feeling as if I was losing my mind.

  A family I knew from Greenwich was there. I knew they had suffered a loss of family member not too long before, so I gave them the Mother Teresa book. I stayed in St. Patrick’s until the church had cleared. I thought that maybe the priest could help me go to sleep. When I was thirteen I’d refused to receive the sacrament of confirmation because I’d decided that I did not believe in the Catholic religion. Here I was on Christmas Eve falling to my knees and weeping in front of a priest. I felt as though he was my last resort, and I begged him to help me.

  He put his hand over my head and said something like, “Lord Jesus Christ, help bestow sleep upon this child tonight.” Then my mother’s boyfriend drove me to my father’s house, where I passed out and slept for about fourteen hours.

  I remember very little about Christmas Day. Charlie’s friends from Miami, Andrew and Stephen, were with me, because I felt safe with them. I vaguely recall making them stay with me as I tried to sleep and telling them that I felt like there were bugs inside my body.

  The next day I do remember.

  I was in my mom’s house painting when my dad came into the room. “Ally, I think you have to go to Silver Hill,” he said.

  “The rehab? The psych ward?” I said.

  “The other day when you told me that the only thing that can help you is weed, that scared me.”

  Then I threw whatever I could get my hands on across the room and smashed a huge dresser mirror. As my father turned to leave, I yelled, “You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re not listening to me! That’s not what’s wrong with me! You’re the crazy one!”

  My mom didn’t think I needed to go to rehab; she thought I needed to see a psychic. The next thing I knew I was sitting across from a psychic who was telling me how specially gifted I was. I really didn’t want to hear anything she had to say.

  That day my dad flew to Colorado for a planned trip and I had one of my mom’s security guards drive me into the city again, this time so I could find Ms. Sclan, my English teacher from PCS. I thought she would understand what I was going through. I couldn’t find Ms. Sclan’s number. I knew she liked to eat at Steak Frites near Union Square, but for some reason we didn’t go there and instead settled for a bar on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

  I felt like shit. My father wanted me to go to rehab. I might as well just get drunk, I thought. The place was called Off the Wagon. Pretty appropriate, huh?

  At the bar that night, I told the security guard my deepest secrets. I hadn’t even told my parents, but here I was pouring my heart out to the security guard. I was desperate for anyone’s compassion; maybe someone would be able to explain what the hell was happening to me.

  Later my dad told me that I called him that night and asked for help in a way that frightened him. My dad was still in Colorado. It was the middle of the night and snowing heavily there, but my dad decided to fly home anyway. He remembers getting into a taxi and the driver seeming a little sketchy. Dad must have looked pretty worried. He feared for his daughter’s life, the snow was coming sideways, he didn’t know if the plane would take off, and he didn’t really trust the guy who was driving him to the airport. But then the driver turned to my dad and asked him if he was okay.

  “No,” my dad said. And he told the guy behind the wheel the whole story. As it happened, the driver was the perfect audience. He’d had problems with his daughter, too, but she was sober for ninety days now. The driver himself had been sober for many years. My dad took this as a sign that his daughter needed to go to rehab.

  I woke up late the next afternoon to find my father waiting for me in the kitchen. I was still very angry at him. I kept telling him that I was sick, that something was wrong inside me. I began to think about the parasites again and that he wasn’t getting the message. I got out of bed, grabbed a silver tray off a table, went into the bathroom, defecated on it, and handed it to him.

  “You’ve gotta get this tested,” I said. “If there are parasites in there you’re going to be sorry.”

  In looking back, I can’t blame him or anyone else for thinking that I was off my rocker. Even in my crazy manic state, however, I knew there was something physically wrong with me and that no matter how hard I screamed, no one heard. The louder I screamed, the less they listened, and the more they thought I was nuts.

  I remember standing in the foyer in my mother’s house, in my underwear, weighing about eighty-seven pounds and using a wooden spoon to smash my mother’s favorite plates, acting like George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? One of my mom’s security guards had a sister or girlfriend who was a therapist, and my father had called her so she was in the house while I was smashing the plates. Everybody was trying to reason with me, but it was as if we were speaking different languages: I was yelling, “Help me!” And they were saying, “It’s okay.”

  I don’t know whether it was because of my sudden Bob Marley obsession, but I decided I had to go to Jamaica. The answer to my problems, I thought, must be in Jamaica. At the time, my mom’s assistant, Isa, who happens to be Michael Bolton’s daughter, was in Jamaica with her family on a Christmas vacation, so I thought I would go visit them.

  Finally it seemed my dad heard what I was trying to say. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you to the airport and we’ll go to Jamaica.” I went upstairs, took a shower, and put some stuff into a suitcase. When I came downstairs, my dad grabbed me and shoved pills down my throat. He was hurting me and I looked toward the security guard for help. He said, “Mr. Hilfiger, take your hands off your daughter,” and my dad released me but the pills had already dissolved. They did calm me down.

  They took me to out to the car while my mother screamed, “Do not take her! Do not take her!” Her boyfriend was holding her back, but Mom was kicking and screaming. She was trying to help me but she didn’t know how. They put me in the backseat with a security guard on either side and my dad drove.

  It soon became apparent that we were not headed toward the airport. “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

  “Ally, I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

  I yelled at Dad to let me out. I was afraid there would be cameras and reporters and people would recognize me at the hospital. One of the guards assured me that we were going in a back entrance, that it was private and no one would know. Inside the hospital door, a doctor was waiting for us. The thought of seeing a doctor calmed me down enough that I walked into the emergency room without a struggle.

  And that’s when I started playing with a purple glove while he injected me with something… and blackout.

  part two

  fifteen

  ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

  “I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.”

  —RANDALL PATRICK MCMURPHY

  I personally believe that most things happen for a reason, and that our instincts guide us toward those who are divinely meant to be in our lives. I also believe that we have had many lives before this one, and that we make “soul agreements” with other people before entering into the next life. I know this theory might sound totally out there, but it’s a belief that I’ve deeply explored, questioned, and proved in mysterious ways throughout the years. There are wonderful books on the subject that explain it a lot better than I can.

  Throughout my life I’ve found kindred spirits in people much older than I am. I think of them as spiritual guides who are placed in my path, one after another, literally handing me along.

  Some of this conviction comes from my dad’s Hindu beliefs, although my father leans more toward the Buddhist teachings. I’ve mentioned that in the early days, my parents traveled to India often to make their clothes. They lived there for a while right after they were married, when dad was making 20th Century Survival and mom had O Tokyo. Mohan Murjani, who backed my father in business, is a Hindu Indian. Mohan gave us a prayer book called Begin the Day with God and every evening at dinner my mom would choose one of us to read out of the book. Later, I’d devoured books like Teachings of the Buddha, by Jack Kornfield; Your Soul’s Plan, by Robert Schwartz; Many Lives, Many Masters, by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.; and The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. It was these readings and other sources that introduced me to the idea of past lives.

  If I had any flicker of doubt about living past lives, it was extinguished by the connection I’ve had with my dad. Over the years we’ve had too many moments of déjà vu, too much intuition and unexplained affinity for the same things to doubt that we have been here together before.

  So it was very difficult for me to accept that my father had committed me to a psychiatric hospital. I thought he’d done it because of some past-life debits that I owed, perhaps to him. I realize this sounds nuts, but sometimes your best insights come when you’re at your most messed up. Think about that.

  It was certainly the case with me. Deep inside I knew then that what I was experiencing was much more a spiritual emergency than an emotional one. My vessel was not strong enough to hold all the spiritual information that was flooding me. And I knew it was my spirituality, and only my spirituality, that could save me from the physical and emotional prison that I was in.

  You can fight Lyme disease with all the medical expertise available, and I have. You can fortify yourself with the best holistic diet and herbs that money can buy, and I did. I know as sure as I’m writing these words on the page, however, that if you don’t have a strong and clear spiritual connection you don’t stand a chance against any disease.

  Yes, I was saddened by, and furious about, my dad’s actions and to be honest, sometimes I’m still angry with him for what he did. When my heart is clear, however, I know that he saved my life. I also now know that the psych ward was only another step on an intense spiritual-seeking mission.

  I had to go through the darkness if I was to shed any light on the disease I didn’t even know I had.

  I awoke in a strange bed, in a dimly lit room, on a cold December afternoon and I couldn’t seem to put the pieces together. I had the feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me to trust no one and get the hell out of wherever I had ended up.

  When you are heavily medicated, which I was, it is difficult to tell the difference between a person who is trying to help you and a person who couldn’t care less about the amount of psychiatric medications they are pumping into your bloodstream. There are also those people who are interested in the psychotic banter coming out of the heavily medicated person’s mouth, and those who nod, stare, and think, Ohhh boy, this one’s gonna take a while to bring back down to earth. Better up her dosage.

  And so it was with my first doctor at Silver Hill Hospital.

  Undoubtedly intelligent, Dr. “B” tried to be kind but it was a kindness that I suspect had been eroded by disappointment, life, or maybe his job. He seemed unapproachable, and he was one of the up-the-dose guys. He seemed to have little patience for me and just thought I was completely out of my mind, which I guess I still was—I was still reading people’s fortunes with a regular deck of cards.

  I was given one of those marble-colored composition books to keep a journal and in it I wrote, “Dr. B is an analytical prick.” He was like everybody else in my life who just wouldn’t listen to me. I wanted to scream, I know I’m crazy right now but you wouldn’t blame me if I explained it to you!

  My brain had trouble functioning in the best of circumstances, but in the Acute Care Unit of the psychiatric hospital, let’s just say it wasn’t the perfect setting for clear thinking. I didn’t know what to make of my life. So much of it hurt, so much of it was confusing. Yet it also seemed as though I was on a path that had been set long before I was born and it was such a wondrous path, filled with interesting people and exciting places and things. I didn’t know why this was all happening to me and therefore couldn’t explain it to other people. I was a mouse in a maze.

  My mother came to the hospital to visit me. She brought me some warm clothing, sweatshirts, and socks. I’d packed for Jamaica, lots of sarongs and silk cover-ups, and cutoff shorts for the beach—not exactly the appropriate garb for a crazy house in the Connecticut winter. Mom wasn’t at all happy with my dad for putting me in a psych ward in the way that he did it, especially without consulting her. She thought he was trying to come up with quick and drastic solutions to fix the problem, a problem that no one could even pinpoint.