Creating Myself

PrologueThe EndOn a warm spring night in 2001, a few months before my twenty-second birthday, I had an absurdly stupid, pathetic, and desperate thought -- one few would have suspected coming from me, a successful plus-sized model featured in magazines and typically described as a self-confident role model.I was going to kill myself.I was up in the Hollywood Hills, at a home filled with a couple dozen people partying their brains out, some jumping naked in the pool and others dancing to music that thumped loud enough to feel like a series of small earthquakes.Was it possible to be around so many people and still feel absolutely alone? Yes, sadly, and I was proof.I opened a sliding door and stepped out onto a balcony that was cantilevered over a deep canyon. Standing there, I had the sense of being on a platform over nothing, a six-foot-long sidewalk suspended in the sky. Straight ahead, far beyond the drop, in a carpet of twinkling lights, clouds, and stars, sprawled Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Corny as it sounds, I wondered where my angels were, whether they were out there, and if they were, would I find them?One thing I knew for sure. If I jumped, no one would find me at the bottom of the canyon.I sat down and let my legs dangle over the edge. I puffed on a joint that I'd brought out with me and tried to figure out how I'd ended up in this spot -- me, the daughter of rock star Steven Tyler and legendary '70s glamour girl Cyrinda Foxe. I knew better than to think that a gold American Express card and a famous last name guaranteed anything more in life than entry to a club. Then, as in the past, I had to ask if I wanted to be anyplace where they only cared about my last name.What about me? What about my first name?But never mind how other people reacted to me and what they thought. What did I think? How did I feel about me?Why was it worthwhile going on? Was I happy? Had I ever been happy? Was there any meaning to my life?Those questions and others went through my head. After I found myself repeating the word no, as in no, I'd never been happy, and no, there wasn't any meaning to my life, I stood up, gripped the rail with both hands, and with tears streaming from my eyes I prepared to jump.Thoughts of the past and the future vanished from my head as I girded myself for whatever the end would feel like and the start of the next experience, if there was indeed some kind of life after death. I felt my heart beating fast and hard, and I filled up with fear. I wondered if it was going to hurt. If it did, it wouldn't matter for more than an instant, right?Then, as I began to count my breaths toward the last one, I looked up at the sky. Through puddled eyes, I searched the stars and, though not religious, I asked God for a reason not to jump."Just give me a sign," I cried softly. "God, please give me a sign if I'm supposed to go on. I don't care what it is. Just give me something that will let me feel like I have a reason to face tomorrow."Nothing happened."God?"I don't know why, but I was waiting.Less than ten seconds later, my cell phone rang. The sound startled me. I didn't get service up in the hills. I took my phone out of my pocket anyway and saw that I had a message. I noticed that it had come in earlier that day, but due to what I supposed was bad cell reception, it didn't get to me until that moment.What a moment, though. Right?The message was from a talent executive at MTV saying that I'd been hired as the network's new metal chick VJ. He wanted me to return to New York immediately."We know you don't have any experience doing this," he said. "But we saw your tape and we like who you are. So let me know when you can get back here and we'll get you on air."I listened to the message again. Then I sat down cross-legged on the balcony and cried till I ran out of energy.Knowing that call had saved my life, I was overwhelmed by emotTyler, Mia is the author of 'Creating Myself' with ISBN 9781416558606 and ISBN 1416558608.