Aging isn't easy for any woman in the public eye, but it may be proving especially difficult for Tully Hart, the ex-star of the once-phenom talk show The Girlfriend Hour. Ms. Hart's goddaughter, Marah Ryan, contacted Star exclusively. Ms. Ryan, 20, confirms that the fifty-year-old Hart has been struggling lately with demons that she's had all her life. In recent months, she has "gained an alarming amount of weight" and been abusing drugs and alcohol, according to Ms. Ryan.

Tully Hart once appeared to have it all, but the aging talk show host, who has openly spoken of the difficult childhood she survived, and who has never been married or had children, appears to be crumbling under the pressure of her recent failures.

Dr. Lorri Mull, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, who hasn't treated the star, says, "Miss Hart is exhibiting classic addict behavior. She's clearly spiraling out of control."

Most drug addicts ...

I let the magazine slide to the floor. The pain I have been holding at bay for months, years, roars to life, sucks me into the bleakest, loneliest place I've ever been. I will never be able to crawl out of it.

I stumble out of the living room and leave my condo, grabbing my car keys as I go. I don't know where I'm going. Just out. Away.

I can't live like this anymore. I have tried to go on alone; God knows I've tried. But the world is so big and I feel so incredibly small, not myself at all. I am like a charcoal drawing of the woman I once was, just black lines and white space, a silhouette. My heart can't hold this loss. I can't ... look away anymore. Now all I see is the emptiness around me, beside me. Inside of me.

A strong wind would blow me away, that's how weak I am, and it's okay. I don't want to be strong anymore. I want to be ... gone.

In the elevator I push the down button. As I careen through the underground parking lot, I fish the Xanax out of my evening bag and swallow two, gagging at the bitter taste.

I get into my car, rev the engine, and drive away. I turn onto First Street without even looking to my left. Tears and rain blur my view, turn my familiar city into a landscape I've never seen before, a jagged, misshapen blur of silvery skyscrapers and distorted neon signs and lamplight burned into impossible, watery shapes. My despair is spilling over, obliterating everything else. I swerve to the right to miss something-a pedestrian, a bicyclist, a figment of my imagination-and there it is: a hulking concrete stanchion that supports the aging, dangerous viaduct, looming in front of me.

I see that huge black post and I think: End it.

End it.

The simplicity of it takes my breath away. Has the thought been there all along? Have I been circling it in the obscurity of my subconscious, watching it? I don't know. All I know is it's there now, as seductive as a kiss in the dark.

I don't have to be in pain anymore. All it takes is a turn of the wheel.

CHAPTER Twenty-five

"Oh, my God." I turn to Kate. "I tried to turn at the last second to avoid hitting the stanchion."

I know.

"I had one split second where I thought, Who would care? and I kept my foot on the gas, but then I turned. Only ... it was too late."

Look.

The moment she says the word, I see that we are in the hospital room again. It is bright and white and there are people around my bed.

I'm hovering above it all, looking down on them.

I see Johnny with his arms crossed tightly, moving back and forth. His mouth is drawn into a frown, and Margie is crying quietly, a handkerchief held to her mouth, and my mother looks devastated. The twins are there, standing close together. What I see are the tears in Lucas's eyes and the defiant, angry jutting out of Wills's small chin. They look insubstantial somehow, boys who have been partially erased.

They have spent too much time in hospitals already, these boys. It breaks my heart that I have brought them back here again.

My boys, Kate says, and the softness in her voice takes me aside. Will they remember me? This she says so quietly I think I may have imagined it. Or maybe I am reading her mind like best friends do.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

My boys, growing up without me? No. She shakes her head; silvery blond hair shivers at the movement. What is there to say?

In the silence that falls between us, I hear strains of a song, coming from the iPod on the bedside table; the volume is so low I can barely hear it. Hello darkness my old friend ...

And then I hear voices.

"... it's time ... not hopeful..."

"... temperature normal ... remove ventilator."

"... we've removed the shunt, but..."

"... drained..."

"... on her own, we'll see..."

The man in white seems menacing somehow; I shiver when he says, "... Are you ready?"

They are talking about my body, about me, about taking me off life support. They are here, my friends and family, to watch me die.

Or breathe, Kate says. Then: It's time. Do you want to go back?

I get it. Everything has been leading up to this moment. I see that with a clarity that should have been there before.

I see Marah walk into the hospital room. She looks so thin and frail as she stands by Johnny, who puts an arm around her.

She needs you, Kate says to me. And so do my boys. There is a hitch in her voice; an emotion I know runs deep. I made her a promise to be there for her children and I failed. In a way, the proof is in the piercings. I feel my old nemesis-longing-uncoil from its place deep, deep inside me and spread out.

They love me. Even from where I am, through the mist of worlds, I can see that. Why didn't I see it when I was standing beside them? Maybe we see what we expect to. I do want to undo what I've done-this terrible, selfish thing-I want to undo it and have a chance to be another version of myself. A better version.

And I love them. How was it that I have believed I was incapable of love, all these years, when I feel it so deeply? I turn to say this to Kate, and she smiles at me, my best friend, with her long, tangled blond hair and thick eyelashes and her smile that lights up any room.

My other half. The girl who took my hand all those years ago and didn't let go until she had to.

In her eyes, I see our lives: dancing to our music, riding our bikes in the dark, sitting in chairs on her beach, talking and laughing. She is my heart; the one who lets me soar and keeps me grounded. No wonder I went crazy without her. She was the glue that held us all together.

Say goodbye to me, she says quietly.

In the hospital room-and now it feels far, far away-I hear someone-the doctor-say, "Does anyone want to say anything first?"

But I am listening to Kate now: I'll always be with you, Tul. Always. Friends no matter what. This time you won't stop believing.

I had stopped believing-in her, in me, in us. In everything.