'Eat, Pray, Love' fame Elizabeth Gilbert's new book dives into love, grief

I came up with the plan late one night when she had been awake for many hours staring into a mirror with her eye only one inch away from the reflective surface yelling at the demon that she swore she could see in her eyersquos reflectionmdasha demon who she kept insisting ldquolives all the way down there at the bottom of my brainrdquoldquoItrsquos you againrdquo she was shouting at the demon ldquoYou again You stole my fking Rolex this timerdquoElizabeth Gilbert and Rayya Elias had known each other were best friends for 17 years before Eliasrsquo cancer diagnosis forced them to confront their true feeling about each other PicGetty ImagesIt was not easy to sleep through this rant especially when she kept waking me up and making me come to the bathroom and stare in the mirror with her to prove that the demon was indeed right there inside her eye and that moreover the demon was wearing her watch Needless to say her watch was on her wrist the whole time so I suppose itrsquos pretty obvious who the demon in the mirror actually wasldquoMotherfer thinks it can fk with merdquo muttered Rayya ldquoDoesnrsquot know who itrsquos fking with does it babe You tell it You tell it who itrsquos fucking with Irsquom Rayya fucking Elias thatrsquos who I am You tell it babe You tell itrdquoElizabeth Gilbert PicDeborah LopezShe has to die now said my exhausted mindmdashand suddenly this seemed like a terrific solution After all Rayya was dying already anyway right I just needed to move the process along before things got even worse before she set the whole building on fire with a dropped cigarette or got us both arrestedShe had to die and I was the one who had to kill herI decided I would do it the next dayI went back to sleep that night in peace knowing that liberation was finally in sightHer new memoir All The Way To The River is centered on her relationship with Elias and addictionI want to make something extremely clear here When I say that I once planned to murder Rayya I donrsquot mean that the idea simply crossed my mind that my life would be easier if she were gone I mean that I fully intended to kill her And I tell this story in all its raw honesty because I want people to understand how insane codependency can make a person become I mean Irsquom the nice lady who wrote Eat Pray Love And I came very close to premeditatedly and coldbloodedly murdering my partner because she had taken her affection away from me and because I was extremely tiredThatrsquos the sort of personI become when Irsquom in my insanityThe next morning while Rayya nodded off in front of the TV I stole some of her sleeping pills and morphine pills and took them to the park with me While my fellow New Yorkers went about their business in the beautiful summer light I sat on a bench studying and comparing the two medications in the palm of my hand trying to figure out how I could make the sleeping pills look like the morphine pills so I could trick her into taking a bunch of them I needed her to take the sleeping pills not the morphine pills mdash which no longer had much of an effect on her stubbornly resistant drug addictrsquos nervous system mdash because if I could knock her out with the sleeping pills then I could stick a whole bunch of fentanyl patches on her back once she was unconscious and that would surely kill her The pills were different sizes but they were the same color One set of pills was scored the other wasnrsquot If I got a razor blade and scored the sleeping pills perhaps I could get her to think they were the morphine pills Or would Rayya even notice if all the pills were mixed up together She was so blinded by drugs at this point that she might just swallow them without noticing if I just handed them to her But she was also deeply paranoid She had taken over management of her pill protocol months earlier mdash fearful I think that I would deny her the drugs she wanted Her suspicions might be triggered by my giving her a handful of pills and a glass of water and telling her to down themI would have to be careful about this murder I knew mdash not because I was afraid of the police I wasnrsquot even thinking about the police I was so out of my mind but because I was really really afraid of Rayya If she woke up and realized I was trying to murder her Irsquod be dead Literally dead If I didnrsquot kill her she would kill me So I had only one chance I reckoned to do the job right But I believed I could do it mdash and that I could do it with a steady hand Somebody had to do it Somebody had to put an end to this nightmareWhen I returned to the apartment my mood was strangely buoyant I felt quite proud of myself for my courage Not everyone is clever or brave enough to do what I intended to do that dayI walked in cheerfully saying ldquoHi honey Irsquom backrdquoRayya looked up at me from her seat by the coffee table mdash which was as always covered with cocaine and pills and boozeWithout even blinking and in a voice that was dead calm and sober she said ldquoDonrsquot you start plotting against me now LizrdquoFor a long long time we held each otherrsquos gazes in silenceIn that moment it felt as if there were a break in the universeIt was as if someone had pressed Pause on the outrageous little drama we were acting out and we had both dropped our costumes and were staring at each other as undefended souls stripped of our identities history and egosHere we were again back in the cosmic boardroom at the beginning of time recognizing each other once more and deciding to go on this journey togetherHow far would we take itExcerpted with permission from All The Way To The River by Elizabeth Gilbert published by Bloomsbury Publishing