Gilbert has made a journal entry every day since Rayya Elias’s death in 2018.
On April 25, 2016, I got a phone call from Rayya. “Are you sitting down?” she asked, just like people do in the movies. I sat down. “They found tumors,” she said. “Lots of them. Not just in my liver. In my pancreas, too.” The breath left my body and for a long moment did not come back.
Rayya Elias had been my best friend for years. But she was more than just a friend. She was my confidante, my consigliere, my bodyguard, my safe person. She was my first phone call in any emergency and also at any moment of celebration. My dependence upon her was absolute. The other truth was that I was in love with Rayya, but I’d been hiding that fact from her (and from my husband and even from myself) for many years by that point, unwilling to disturb the delicate ecosystem of our friendship or to jeopardize our other relationships. But with that phone call, I knew that everything would have to change.
On the day that I finally told Rayya the truth — that I had loved her for many years and that I wanted to be with her until she died — we had never so much as kissed. After a long silence, she opened her eyes and smiled. She gathered me up in her arms and said, “Baby, my baby. My beautiful baby, why did you take so long to come to me?”
It feels weird now, and somehow clinical, to call it “sex” — what Rayya and I did that first night we were alone together in bed. I knew that Rayya hated it when girls kissed her too softly and “weakly,” but she also hated it when anyone other than she took charge in bed. So I was more than happy to kiss her strongly and let her take charge of everything else.
I fell asleep just before the sun came up, but Rayya didn’t end up sleeping at all. She told me later that she’d been overcome by such a wild energy — an energy so ferocious and specific and primal — that she couldn’t possibly rest. She thought she would explode, she said, if she tried to lie still beside me.
They gave her six months to live. It was April. She would definitely be gone by Christmas, they said. “When the end comes, it’ll come fast,” one of the doctors explained when Rayya asked for the non-sugarcoated truth about how it would all go down. “If you let the cancer take its course, you’ll be able to live your life for a while, walking and talking and seeming relatively fine — and then all your organs will begin to shut down quite suddenly. There will be some pain toward the end, but we’ll make sure you don’t suffer.”
Of course, the doctor added, the cancer could be treated. If Rayya wanted to go that route, there were chemotherapies that could slow the growth of the tumors and perhaps extend her life for a few years — but there would be no cure. And then she would be constantly sick from the chemo itself.
Rayya rejected this option completely: “No chemo, no radiation, no surgery, no hospitals. I don’t mind dying of cancer, but I refuse to be a cancer patient for the rest of my life.” I was amazed by her fortitude and her certainty, but then I was always amazed by Rayya.
But the real and perhaps strangest truth was this: After Rayya got over the initial shock of her diagnosis, she actually rather liked the idea of the sudden death the doctors were promising her if the cancer were left untreated. She liked the drama of it, the intensity of it, the swiftness of it. Most of all, she liked the freedom she felt this was bringing to her life. She hid this exuberance at first from other people because her friends and family were still reeling from the news and she didn’t want to freak them out. But when we were alone together, she let fly an unrestrained ecstasy at the clarity, the simplicity, of what she had been told by the doctors.
She never again had to worry about what she ate or how much she weighed. She didn’t have to worry about those cigarettes she could never quit smoking and what they were doing to her lungs. She didn’t have to work anymore or feel bad that she never went to the gym. She didn’t have to do anything now except, in her own words, “live my life to the max, man, and then flame the fuck out.” In other words, she didn’t have to do anything now except what she wanted to do — which had always been her dream anyway.
And what Rayya wanted to do with the rest of her life was to spend every minute she could with me, to make as much music as she could, to eat a bunch of incredible meals with her friends and family, to go on some fabulous trips, and to spend every last dime of her money.
Spurred by how brief and precious her remaining time on earth was, she doubled down on her creativity, and I did all I could to support her dreams and visions. I rented music studios both where we were, in New York, and in her native Detroit so we could record some songs she had written long ago and other songs we had written together. She got a gig at Joe’s Pub reading some of her work before a delighted audience, and we looked into renting a theater downtown so we could produce, on the fly, a one-woman show of music and stories about her life. She made arrangements to speak to female inmates on Rikers Island, where she had once been jailed for dealing drugs, wanting to instill them with a sense of their own value and possibility. I rented a penthouse apartment on her favorite block in the East Village, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a terrace and sweeping views, so we could live there together until she died.
I wasn’t the only one in Rayya’s circle who came along on this ride. There were a few other family members and friends, some of her exes, and a handful of our fellow artists and creators who also got caught in the upswell of consequence-free excitement that Rayya’s death sentence had suddenly unleashed.
“Do you remember all those nights we went out to Sid Gold’s piano bar for karaoke?” Rayya’s nephew Sami asked me recently. “All those incredible meals where nobody cared about the cost? It was so gangster the way you guys were living. It made a big impact on everyone. It was like we all started asking, Wait — why aren’t we all making art? Why aren’t we all spending our money while we have the chance? Why aren’t we all singing and dancing all night? It was like your love activated all of us. Do you remember that?”
What I remember most about that time is how electric I felt. My entire body and imagination were thrumming with the prospect of living without any limits or rules whatsoever — of doing whatever the hell we wanted; of throwing off the shackles of respectability and responsibility; of burning up the last few months of Rayya’s life as her literal “ride or die” lover; of gunning through our short but intense romance with such a heightened level of passion that I truly believed we would generate enough love to last me for the rest of my life and I would never, ever have to suffer or feel pain again (not even after she died!). Somehow we would both be rescued, transformed, and immortalized by the sheer blasting heat, joy, and liberation of this once-in-a-million-years love story.
Rayya had been clean from heroin for more than a decade but had started drinking occasionally a few years earlier. Suddenly, in our libertine frenzy, we were drinking a lot. And there was a lot of weed involved as well because Rayya’s cancer diagnosis gave her access to the best prescription marijuana available in New York and we kept ourselves busy sampling all of it. We were both using a lot of Xanax and Ambien to settle our hyperactivated nerves. What’s more, a concerned friend had given us a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and MDMA to help us process the reality of Rayya’s impending death. So that was also going on, and often we were literally out of our minds.
But I had far more powerful substances coursing through my bloodstream than mere alcohol, weed, Xanax, psilocybin, sedatives, sleeping pills, and ecstasy could ever produce — and so, I suspect, did Rayya.
We were sky-high on drugs from the internal pharmacy: endorphins, oxytocin, adrenaline. We couldn’t take our eyes off each other; we couldn’t take our hands off each other. The tenderness and intimacy of our first night in bed together had escalated into a nearly violent rapture as we pushed each other to ever-wilder expressions of eroticism. We were laughing and crying and rolling around the bed in fits of blinding passion. Who needs food? Who needs sleep? Who needs money, plans, clothes, a home — anything but love?
Rayya was the one who officially had no future, but I was now acting as if I didn’t have one either. I dropped everything I was working on and completely forgot about anything I had ever cared about before her cancer diagnosis. Blew off working on the novel I’d been researching for two years. Canceled most of my publicity appearances for the paperback publication of my book Big Magic. Canceled all my upcoming speaking events, interviews, and workshops. Canceled production of my podcast. Stopped calling my friends. Told my family to leave me alone, that I’d catch up with them later. Started divorce proceedings.
Rayya on her 56th birthday, right before her cancer diagnosis.
With Rayya.
How high can you fly before you crash? How long can you stay intoxicated beyond all recognition? How long can you sustain a buzz, a bender, a peak experience, a magic-carpet ride, a hot-burning flame of mania, a trip to Venus on a pink cloud?
“How can I be so happy when I’m also dying?” Rayya kept asking, and I wondered the same thing: How can I be so happy when she is also dying?
We soared on that happiness like it was a hot-air balloon. We managed to shut out the demands of reality for a good chunk of the spring and early summer of 2016 — to cocoon ourselves in bed and lose ourselves in each other’s gazes and words and bodies. I never wanted it to end. But then, of course, it ended.
Rayya was rich with friends and family and community. She was abundant with people who loved and needed her (and whom she needed and loved), and these people were having their own reactions to her cancer diagnosis. Rayya might have wanted to flame out in a blaze of glory, but a lot of these people wanted her to stay.
They didn’t want to lose their sister, their aunt, their business partner, their beloved friend. Everyone, it seemed, had a doctor they wanted her to meet, a radical new cure they’d heard about on TV, a clinic in Switzerland they thought she should check out, a new study they wanted her to read, an uncle who had spontaneously gone into full remission, or some unconventional scientist who was doing research with light waves. Everyone had some magical diet or guided meditation or prayer or supplement that could keep her alive for many months, if not years!
Much of this was wishful thinking, but some of it was grounded in reality. As Rayya and I had been told in the early days of her diagnosis, there were indeed some treatments out there that had been shown to extend the lives of patients with her exact diagnosis. Nobody who was legitimate claimed they could cure her, but the miracles of modern medicine, combined with some prudent changes in lifestyle and diet (ha!), might be able to buy her some extra time. And once Rayya’s loved ones heard about this, they pushed her even harder to get chemo — to go to any lengths to live a little bit longer. Why wouldn’t she fight for her life? they asked. If not for herself, why wouldn’t she try to survive for them? How could she give up so easily? How could she be so selfish or cowardly or flat-out stupid?
More than anyone I’ve ever met, Rayya hated being told what to do, and she bridled at all this unsolicited advice. In the end, she caved to her family’s wishes that she fight the cancer, but only in a “sort of, kind of” way. She agreed to try chemo for three months, but not for a moment longer.
During Rayya’s chemotherapy.
In the hospital together in 2016.
Chemotherapy turned out to be effective but vengeful. Rayya entered into treatment three months after she’d been diagnosed — halfway through her projected life expectancy, in other words. And the chemo did indeed provide the miracle it promised, shrinking Rayya’s tumors a small amount and extending her life for a few months, but it also exacted a punishing cost.
As the tumors shrank, so did the abdominal pain Rayya had been experiencing, but it was replaced by a raft of grisly side effects that she found even worse. Her mouth was full of sores; her gums bled; her palms and feet burned; she was constantly nauseous, vomiting, miserable; her skin itched madly; sleep was impossible, yet she was always exhausted; sunlight hurt her eyes and skin; she didn’t have the energy to go outdoors, to see friends, or even to focus on a simple TV show.
Emotionally, she was ravaged by the treatment. What she called “the poison in my blood” left her feeling depressed and angry but also confused and crazy. Her mind weaponized against itself, and the weed that she smoked to help with the nausea turned her paranoid and self-hating. Nighttime became hell for both of us. Rayya often couldn’t sleep, waking up to vomit. And she wouldn’t let me sleep, either. She would wake me and ask, her voice tight with terror, “Do I even have cancer? Is this even real? Did you actually see the results, or am I making this all up? Am I really sick, or am I just trying to get people to feel sorry for me because I’m a fat, lying, manipulative, lazy asshole?”
I was running out of energy from taking care of my sick partner day and night while also taking care of the logistics of both our lives and trying to keep our romance burning at its original fever pitch. And Rayya was depleted, too. The shrinkage the chemo had achieved, her doctors said, was evidence that they could continue to hold the cancer at bay for a few more years. But Rayya was done with it. The cost was too dear for such a small gain. And she detested hospitals, doctors, nurses, shots, scans, tests. Having spent so much time in institutions when she was an active drug addict, such places brought back her worst memories. Even the smell of a hospital and the sight of the flickering fluorescent lights made her want to, as she said, “put a fucking gun in my mouth.” She had given the chemo a try because her family had wanted her to try it, but now she was finished, and she was willing to go into hospice instead.
“Are you aware,” the doctor asked, “that your cancer will return if you stop treatment? Are you aware that all these gains we have made will be quickly lost?”
“Trust me, I’m aware,” said Rayya. “But I don’t care how short my life is; I just want to be free.”
She took her final dose of chemo on October 2, just over five months after her initial diagnosis, and then said to her lovely Irish oncologist, “You are a very nice person, and everyone here at Sloan Kettering has been amazing, but honestly? I never want to see any of you people again.”
And then she was free — both of us were free — for an incredible three months after that. That slight reduction in her tumors continued to bring temporary relief from her cancer pain, and for a while, she was my old Rayya. But soon the cancer started growing again, as promised.
One night around that time, delirious with pain, she woke me up to tell me that her heart had just left her body — that she had watched it leave, she said, “like a small pet running away from me.” She wept and begged me to chase after it, to get her heart back and bring it home to her, but of course I did not know where her heart had gone, or how to retrieve it. Nobody slept a minute that night.
Feeling like I was about to have a psychotic break from sleep deprivation, I begged Rayya to allow me to hire night nurses to come and stay with us in the evenings so they could take care of her when she was having episodes of extreme pain at night. My hope was that the nurses would afford me a chance to catch a few uninterrupted hours of sleep as well. We tried that a few times, but Rayya hated the nurses and resented their presence just as much as she hated the hospice volunteers who were part of her care team now. She was surly with them and kept instructing them to wake me up because she needed me. The same happened when I tried to set up a rotating roster of friends to sleep over. Our friends were more than happy to volunteer for shifts, but Rayya refused their help, often marching right past them when they were sitting vigil on the couch and coming into the guest room to wake me up and demand my help and attention.
Soon we were both shredded — her from physical pain and fear of death, and both of us from sadness, exhaustion, and lack of sleep. She was resentful of me for needing rest, and I was resentful of her for denying me rest. Something clearly needed to be done.
That’s when morphine was recommended. And why not? Everyone knew that Rayya had once been an opioid addict, but nobody was worried about addiction now. She was a terminal cancer patient on a death watch, after all, and her medical team had predicted that she could not possibly live another two months.
Anyway, as one of her doctors explained, “the relief from unbearable pain is what these opioids are for, Rayya. And your dosages will be controlled. It won’t be like back in the old days, when you took drugs recreationally.”
At which point Rayya had smiled ruefully at the doctor and said, “Dude, I can promise one thing: I never took drugs recreationally.”
But what else could we do to settle her pain?
“I mean, what’s it gonna do — kill me?” Rayya asked. “Who gives a shit at this point?”
I remember how quiet the apartment felt that afternoon, once that first morphine pill dissolved into Rayya’s system. All was peace; all was gentleness. I remember how Rayya seemed to return to herself, how she became my person again, so strong and calm and reassuring. How she gathered me up into her arms, saying, “I’m so sorry, baby, for how hard this has been on you. Everything will be easier now, I promise. I don’t care if I die, as long as I can die in your arms. I need you to know that the happiest moments of my life were with you. Stay with me, baby. Don’t go. I love you so much.”
And when I asked her, in the blessed silence, what it felt like to have opioids back in her system after all these years, she just gave a slow, sleepy-eyed smile and said, “It’s like, Hello, old friend.”
Soon Rayya went from needing one morphine pill a day to two pills a day to three a day, to one pill every hour, to two pills every hour, to clusters of pills at a time — until, within a matter of a few weeks, she was yelling into the phone to her doctors, “This shit doesn’t fucking work on me! You gotta give me something stronger, or I swear to fucking God I will go out there on 14th Street and find something stronger and shoot it right into my fucking veins — and don’t think I don’t know how!”
So then they gave her methadone. And then they gave her fentanyl patches (“something stronger,” to be sure), which worked beautifully until they didn’t — until her addict’s brain became resistant to the powers of even this most formidable and dangerous of drugs.
That’s when Rayya had the inspired idea to add a bit of cocaine to the mix, “to give me a little bump and help me stay awake,” and she bought her first gram of coke in nearly 20 years and put it right up her nose to tremendous and obvious relief.
Was that when she officially lost her sobriety and sanity?
Or was it the next night — when she shot the remainder of the cocaine into her arm (“Better than the nose, as always,” she said) and then chased it with a few morphine pills, then downed a handful of muscle relaxants just for good measure, and then informed me as she was nodding off into oblivion that “a hole just opened up through our bedroom ceiling and my ancestors are rolling in, four layers deep”?
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Was that the moment of relapse?
Or had it started long before the cancer even appeared? Had she fallen off the wagon many years earlier, when she decided to start drinking and hide it from everyone? Or had she begun sliding back into addiction when she had stopped going to 12-step meetings because she got annoyed with all those “rigid bitches” in the rooms and because she didn’t want to work a program anymore? Or had her decline begun even before then, when she stopped letting people know how much emotional pain she was in and decided to keep her suffering a secret from those who loved her?
I can’t even tell you when I collapsed into the utter abandonment of self that is codependency in its most deadly and life-destroying form. I can’t name the exact moment when I made her into my higher power, or when I surrendered all my will and agency to her, or when I decided that it was my job in life to serve her every desire — no matter how much it cost me, physically, emotionally, or financially.
Had it been back when I first met Rayya, 17 years earlier, and seeds of desire were planted by how cool and strong and mighty she appeared? Or was it when I stepped into the role of rescuer and decided to save her from the sorrows of her divorce back in 2008 by giving her a home in New Jersey to live in? Or was it when I made her my rescuer, by putting my spirit in her hands, by deciding that she — a mortal and flawed human being — was my only source of safety on this entire terrifying planet?
Or was it when I found out she was dying and I threw my whole life overboard just to be with her?
Or was it when her demands became so impossible to satisfy that they were completely swallowing me, but I still kept giving her everything she wanted?
Or did I completely lose my mind that night in the spring of 2017 when she commanded me to give her some cash so she could buy that first gram of cocaine — and I did it, without hesitation? (In my weak defense, she had looked me straight in the eyes and told me, “This is the exact amount of cocaine that will last me until I die, trust me. I’m just gonna need a tiny amount of coke each day, to keep me from falling asleep in my soup because of the opioids. Trust me, I know how to do this. It’s better if we only risk buying it once — that’s why we’re getting such a large amount.”)
Or was I a total goner a few days later, when she told me to go to the ATM again and get more money so she could buy more cocaine (an eight ball this time) and I did it?
Or was it the morning I walked down to a harm-reduction agency in Chinatown and registered myself as an active intravenous drug user so I could get clean needles for Rayya — because I was determined to keep her safe and free from infection, even as she was dying of cancer and shooting cocaine and opioids into the veins of her feet, her hands, her neck?
Or did I abandon myself completely the first time I suggested that perhaps she was becoming addicted to the cocaine, and she told me I was a “needy fucking crybaby” who needed to “back the fuck off from talking about shit you don’t even fucking understand,” and I stuck around after that for more abuse?
Or was it when she and I (who had never once had an argument in 17 years of friendship and love) suddenly started fighting every day, as I begged her to look at me again like she used to, to touch me like she used to, to speak to me like she used to? Was it when I started hiding in the bathroom at night, weeping on the floor, while she hid in another bathroom, grinding down her cocaine into a finer and finer powder?
Or was it when I tied off her arms or legs for her while she shot up, watching over her carefully (even holding the light for her so she could find her veins) to make sure she had everything she needed? Just so I could be in the room with her? To make sure she still wanted me, loved me, and approved of me? To make sure that she — who had clearly already left the world behind, and who was also, by the way, dying — would never, ever leave me?
In the midst of all this mess, I received a letter from our landlord saying that he had sold our apartment and that we would need to move out within the next two months. This was shocking news because I’d written to him only a few months earlier, explaining that my partner had terminal cancer and that it would be a blessing if we didn’t have to move at the end of our lease, given the unpredictability of her condition. I’d even offered to pay him extra money if he let us stay for another year so we would be sure to have a stable home. He had expressed sympathy for our situation and had promised that he had no intention of asking us to leave. But now, he explained, he’d gotten an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was very sorry, but we would have to go.
Now I had to figure out how to move my paranoid, hallucinating, abusive, drug-addled terminal cancer patient to a new living space.
So I did what God told me to do: I called a whole bunch of people and asked for help. I sat in Tompkins Square Park for the rest of the day (leaving Rayya to live or die alone in the apartment, or to burn down the entire building, or to get hauled off to prison, for all I knew), and I called just about every kind and wise friend I have ever met. I called everyone I could think of who had ever suffered from addiction or had loved someone who suffered from addiction. I called everyone I knew who might be called “spiritual” or “wise” or “an old soul.”
One humbling and difficult conversation at a time, I told each of them the truth. Until that point, I had not been telling the truth to anyone because I was too ashamed of the horror story I had gotten myself into and also because I was protecting Rayya’s reputation. Until now, I had been pretending that everything was basically fine and under control over at our house: Yeah, sure, Rayya was dying of cancer, but we were rising to meet the challenge! I had been communicating with my friends and family through a series of cheerful emails and texts that were essentially press releases in which I was still portraying Rayya as a stoic and inspiring hero and myself as the tireless and ever-competent caregiver.
I was too jangled and exhausted to keep track of exactly who said what that day, but I remember every bit of wisdom that was communicated to me, because it was the beginning of an awakening that was long, long overdue.
I remember one of these good people saying to me, “Guess what? A lot of drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery get cancer, or other terrible diseases, and they all have to figure out how to manage their pain while also staying sober in their program. If Rayya wants to die clean and with dignity, she needs to get humble, go back to the rooms, and work with a sponsor to find a pain-management plan that will allow her to stay in her sobriety — but are we even sure she wants that? And if she doesn’t want that, there’s nothing you can do to make things better, except maybe get the hell out of there.”
Another person said: “You know, there’s a 12-step recovery fellowship for people whose lives are impacted by other people’s addictions. I would suggest going to a meeting tonight.”
And one final person said: “There’s a 12-step recovery room for sex and love addiction, you know. It’s just like AA but for people with relationship addictions and sexual issues. Have you heard of it? I have a friend who goes there. I think you might be well served to check it out. I’ve known you for more than 30 years, Lizzy, and I’ve watched you suffer a lot of pain over this kind of stuff. Maybe you have a deeper problem than just Rayya. Maybe it’s time you got yourself some help.”
I would love to say that things got better after that, but they didn’t. Or rather, things didn’t get better immediately. I packed up a small bag to crash on my friend’s couch until I could figure out how to clean up this mess. It didn’t help matters at all that I kept getting messages from friends and neighbors downtown reporting that Rayya was really partying it up back in our apartment, which was still in our possession for another month. Apparently, the only people she wanted to see anymore were those who would get drunk and do coke with her — and maybe share some of the opioids, too.
The only glimmer of light for me during this time was that I did finally get some sleep on my friend’s couch, which helped introduce a smidge of sanity into my system.
Meanwhile, I went to a 12-step meeting. Actually, I went to several 12-step meetings. I checked out the fellowship for people whose lives are being negatively impacted by other people’s addictions, and I also attended some recovery meetings for sex and love addiction.
I hated both of them, instantly.
I hated the support meeting for the family and friends of addicts because it didn’t make any sense to me. I went there expecting to hear people share really useful advice about how to get other people clean and sober. But the people in the room were just talking about themselves — about their own issues with anxiety, codependency, and overcontrol. “I have to keep the focus on myself,” I heard several folks say — and that just felt insane to me, given the fact that every single person in that room seemed to be dealing with a loved one who was a deranged drinker or drug fiend. How could anyone keep the focus on themselves when they were surrounded by the chaos of other people’s addictions? Why weren’t they focused instead upon making those drunks and drug addicts stop what they were doing?
Then there was the 12-step meeting for sex and love addicts. I hated that one even more. I hated it because all the people in that room seemed to have super-messed-up histories with romantic dysfunction and sexual degradation — and who wants to hear about that? These people were obviously really sick, and I felt sorry for them.
I also hated that, at the beginning of each meeting, they read from a pamphlet listing the characteristics of sex and love addiction, and I identified so strongly with each and every item on the list that it made me feel exposed — as if I myself were the subject of an intervention. In fact, that list of behaviors described me so perfectly that it could have been my own unauthorized biography.
So I hated going to the meetings, and I found them confronting and confusing, but I kept coming back — at least for a little while.
And, despite my blinding, deafening rage, the voices of the people in the rooms were starting to infiltrate my consciousness. Telling me that I could not control or cure anyone but myself, and to keep the focus on healing my own wounds. Suggesting that perhaps I might consider giving the world back to God and stop trying to manage it all. Teaching me that pouring myself into someone is not necessarily “romantic” — and just might be toxic for all parties concerned. Assuring me that I was not the highest power in the universe, and asking me to stop forcing my will upon others. Inviting me to pray for guidance. Daring me to surrender.
Some of this I heard through my own internal madness, and some of it I even started to understand.
I always sat near the door so I could make a clean getaway at the end of the proceedings, without making eye contact with anyone. Still, I kept coming back.
The couple in Rayya’s final days.
I called Rayya on a weekday morning in late August and asked if I could come down to our apartment for a few minutes to talk to her in candor and honesty.
“I’m not coming over to accuse you of anything, Rayya,” I promised. “And I won’t demand anything of you. I just need to talk to you for ten minutes, heart to heart.”
She must have heard the sincerity in my voice, because she agreed to the meeting. I didn’t have anything scripted. A friend had advised against it.
The place was a mess; she was a mess. But I suppose it was a sign of respect that she had sent away all the people she’d been partying with so at least we could be alone.
We didn’t hug. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down. She was pacing nervously, tugging at her hair, muttering under her breath. She seemed totally out of it.
I said, “I only need a few minutes of your time, Rayya, but I do need you to be fully present for this conversation. Do you think you could do whatever you need to do, substance-wise, in order to really be here with me, with a clear head? Ten minutes is all I ask. Then I promise to leave you alone.”
She nodded. Then she went into the bedroom and shut the door.
She must have done whatever she needed to do — smoked whatever she needed to smoke, injected whatever she needed to inject, swallowed whatever she needed to swallow — because when she came out again, her eyes were clearer, and she was able to sit down and look me in the face.
“Rayya, I need to let you know that I can’t be in this story anymore. It’s doing too much damage to me. I acknowledge that I helped to create this story — that we built this mess together — and I am very, very sorry for my role in this chaos. We are trapped in a codependent relationship, and I am every bit as responsible for that reality as you are. I am deeply sorry for my dysfunction and my own insanity. I’m sorry for the way I threw myself at you when you were in such a vulnerable state after the cancer diagnosis. I’m sorry for having been emotionally dishonest with you for so many years, and for not having shared how much I loved you. I’m sorry for the confusion that must have caused in your head, and the time that my cowardice cost us. I’m sorry for the ways in which I have used you over the years to prop me up emotionally, and to defend me. I’m sorry for making you into my higher power. That was wrong of me, and dehumanizing.”
She didn’t interrupt or challenge me, so I went on.
“You and I were best friends for many years, and I have always loved you. But I haven’t been a good friend to you since you got sick. All I’ve been thinking about is what I can get from you — how much love, how much reassurance, how much of your time and attention. I’ve also been trying to control you by taking over ownership of your life. I’ve been calling myself generous, but I haven’t been generous. I’ve been selfish and self-centered, and that’s on me.”
She nodded gravely, even theatrically, like: I will allow it.
Her patronizing nod almost made me laugh, but I returned my focus to the conversation.
“Now here comes the part about us,” I went on. “I believe you’re in big trouble right now with addiction, and that you’re losing your soul. Maybe you think it doesn’t matter because you’re dying anyway, but I think it does matter how a person dies. I think you made a deal with the Devil a few months ago when you introduced cocaine into your system. You were trying to give yourself a little more energy, to buy yourself some more time — but it’s cost you everything. You were once a great person, Rayya, but you’ve walked away from your greatness. You’ve lost all your integrity. I wish I could help you. The truth is that I don’t know how to help you. Everything I do or say seems to make you angry. You keep telling me that I don’t know what it’s like to die, and you’re right — I don’t know what it’s like to die. I can’t even imagine. You have a lot to be angry about right now; I get it. But your anger has caused you to become abusive, and I won’t stick around for any more of that. I’ve done too much work on myself, and I’ve come too far, to allow myself to be abused like this again. I can’t allow anybody to treat me this way — not even you, and not even under these circumstances. If you were here right now — the real Rayya, I mean — you would never let someone treat me the way you’ve been treating me. The real Rayya would have killed someone who treated me the way you’ve been treating me. But the real Rayya isn’t here anymore, so now I have to step up to my own defense. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She didn’t nod or shake her head, but I could feel that she was listening, at a level deep below surface comprehension. I went on.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do next, Rayya, but it’s your life and your death — so it’s your move. I don’t know how much time you have left. I’m all out of ideas for how to make this journey easier for you. I keep trying to take care of you, but you won’t let me. And I know you well enough to know that you will never live or die by anyone else’s code, anyhow, so I need to stop trying to control you. All I know is that this apartment is being sold — and that’s a hard out. So you’re going to have to leave here, one way or another.”
“But where will I go?” she asked, suddenly looking panicked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You need to figure that out. If you make a plan for yourself that sounds like sanity to me, I’ll come back into your life. But if you keep living like this, I’m gone.”
“But where will you go?”
“I’m getting my own place.”
“But I’m dying,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “You can’t abandon someone who’s dying.”
“I hear you,” I replied. “And I accept that you’re dying. I’ve been preparing for months to say good-bye to you. But this might be the moment when we have to say our good-byes because I won’t stick around for what you’ve gotten yourself into. If we need to say our good-byes now, then I will tell you right now that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, and I always will. You are the love of my life, and of all my lives. I wanted to walk all the way to the river with you, but that might not be possible for us anymore because I can’t survive the way you’re living. It’s too costly for me. It’s too degrading to my soul. And if the real Rayya were here, she would totally agree with me on this. You and I both know that it’s true.”
She nodded, suddenly looking exhausted.
She looked as if she were about 300 years old.
I felt sorry for her then — so terribly sorry.
For a moment, of course, I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to start crying and promise her that I would never leave her side. I wanted to give her a thousand gifts — everything she could ever want — just to make her happy for even one minute.
But the more ancient part of me knew better than to bend on any of this.
After a long while, she sighed, squared her shoulders, and said, “Okay, man. I hear you.”
“Thanks, man,” I replied.
“So I guess that’s it, then?”
“Yes, my love. I guess that’s it.”
I stood up and walked toward the door. Rayya stopped me. She took my arm and looked into my face with searching, tear-filled eyes.
“But are we good, babe?” she asked.
“We’re good,” I told her. “We’ve always been good. We will always be good.” That’s when we hugged. Her body, thin and small.
Her racing heart, beating against my chest.
My Rayya, my vampire, my beloved.
Then I walked out of our apartment — shaken but straight-spined — not knowing if I would ever see her again in this world.
Excerpted from All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, by Elizabeth Gilbert, published on September 9, 2025, by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Gilbert.
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