‘I’m OK’: The biggest lie Rosie Waterland has ever told

JAMILA Rizvi is lucky she had her phone on her the night her friend Rosie Waterland called — the scariest night of her life.

Rosie Waterland’s new book is a dark comedy and an excellent read.

WHAT a strange experience. To read about one of the scariest nights of your life as told from someone else’s perspective. It’s even more unusual when you know that the book you’re reading from will, in all likelihood, become an Australian bestseller.

The night my friend Rosie Waterland attempted suicide, I went to sleep with my phone on the table beside me.

I never sleep with my phone in the bedroom. I leave it charging in the bathroom, a hangover from a brief period when I declared war on screens and their brutal interruption of family life.

I don’t believe in fate, but falling asleep that evening with my phone where I could hear it, feels like something more than luck.

Rosie’s voice sounded dreamy when she called. Partly because I was half-asleep and partly because of all the pills and the vodka she’d taken.

It took me a few minutes to realise exactly what she’d done. I shouted at my husband to call an ambulance before jumping in the car and ignoring every speed limit between my place and Rosie’s.

Rosie’s best friend Antonio Sergi had died suddenly and unexpectedly a few months earlier.

“I’m okay,” she’d assured me only a fortnight before her suicide attempt.

That was a lie.

Rosie Waterland with her best friend Antonia Sergi, who died unexpectedly in 2016.

The lies we tell — both to ourselves and to others — form the emotional backdrop of Rosie Waterland’s latest book, Every Lie I’ve Ever Told.

“Surely this was someone else’s life?” Rosie writes in the opening chapter.

“Surely it was someone else who had downed all that vodka followed by so many pills? Surely it was someone else who was now lying in this bed, hooked up to a million drips, barely able to breathe through the physical pain in her body that didn’t even compare to the emotional pain in her brain?

“This wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. I was successful. I had overcome, damn it. I WAS A FREAKING PHOENIX WHO HAD RISEN FROM THE FREAKING ASHES. My first book said so!

“My first book ended with me finding myself, with me leaving my mental-health struggles firmly in the past with my traumatic childhood. Whatever hardship I had faced, I had beaten it. I had won … I had conquered life at thirty, and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!

“What a total fraud,” she writes.

Anyone who enjoyed Rosie’s debut book, the award-winning The Anti-Cool Girl won’t be disappointed with this equally funny and poignant tale. Fans who fell in love with her satirical recaps of The Bachelor will delight in discovering the more complex, emotional side of her writing.

“I originally wanted to write a book of funny essays but after Antonio died, I decided to weave the narrative of dealing with my grief in amongst it,” Rosie tells me.

“Finding humour is how I handle emotional issues. It’s a cathartic tool but it also makes for a stronger — and less insufferable — book”.

Each chapter in the book begins with a lie. Then, in her trademark candid style Rosie pulls each falsehood apart, exposing the sometimes ugly, sometimes silly, sometimes downright hilarious truth. This, together with her grief in the aftermath of Antonio’s death, comes together to form the blackest of comedies.

There is a serious side to this story. The book includes subtle but powerful commentary on how we understand and treat mental illness in this country. Rosie doesn’t preach. She probes.

She uses her own experience and those of people she has loved to paint a vivid picture of a health system that doesn’t work; a system that continually fails the most vulnerable.

The memoir also chronicles aspects of Rosie’s chaotic and often traumatic childhood. The chapter that details Rosie’s youngest sisters, only three and five years old at the time, being taken into the custody of child protection, is heartbreaking.

Jamila Rizvi with her friend Rosie Waterland.

In that respect, this is partly a story of triumph. Rosie has achieved enormous success in the face of a world that told her a kid who grew up in housing commission and foster homes, never would.

And yet, she admits freely to not having life figured out. Her honesty about the less glamorous — and occasionally totally gross — moments in life are side-splittingly funny. Even the most uptight reader will be left stifling giggles at Rosie’s sophisticated poo jokes. “Farts are funny,” she informs me, semi-seriously.

Many have commented on the deeply personal nature of Rosie’s writing, often lumping her in with the social media “over-sharers” of her generation. But while Rosie’s writing feels effortless to the reader, there is an awful lot of thought, consideration and craft that goes into it.

“I stay true to myself when I’m writing but I’m always thinking about the audience. You want to write a book that people actually want to read,” she explains.

“There’s no pretension in how I write, it’s just how I talk. Because I went to drama school, I write as if I am reading aloud. I read back what I have written over and over, to make sure the rhythm is right”.

After telling her publisher that she’s tapped out of real life stories, Rosie’s next challenge is fiction. “I am so damn sick of writing about myself,” she jokes.

“I’m relieved to be moving onto fiction. It’s already a bit much to have two memoirs at thirty-one. My life is too mundane, I watch too much TV”. She is also writing for television and will be touring a stand-up comedy show, Crazy Lady later this year.

At its core, Every Lie I’ve Ever Told is a love story.

It details the beautiful and extraordinary relationship between Rosie and her best friend, Antonio and the utter devastation she went through after he died. Anyone who has experienced the loss of a friend so dear that they felt like family will find meaning in Rosie’s words. By the end of the book you will come to love Antonio, just like she did and love her all the more. This is a tribute to a man you’re going to wish you’d known.

Today, almost a year on from trying to take her own life, I ask Rosie how she is doing.

“I’m doing brilliantly,” she grins. “Mental illness needs to be treated the same as any other - you have to expect there are going to be flare-ups occasionally. But it doesn’t stop me from living a really full, happy and successful life.”

Rosie Waterland’s new book Ever Lie I’ve Ever Told.

Every Lie I’ve Ever Told is available for pre-order now. Tickets for Rosie Waterland’s comedy show, Crazy Lady, are available here.

If you need support or you’re having suicidal thoughts, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Originally published as ‘I’m OK’: The biggest lie Rosie Waterland has ever told