I had the nerve to be offended. “You were all talking behind my back?”
They each shared their intervention plans, making it clear they did so because they were afraid I was going to die. Stephanie, for one, had planned to talk to my mother.
“My mother?” I said. “Oh God, no. Steph, if my mom told me to stop drinking, I would drink more.”
Another plan was to have Linda Perry talk to me. She’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and I had recently been working with her creating music. Linda had already reprimanded me about writing under the influence. “I don’t want that drunk stuff,” she said. “I need sober writing.”
“I would have been so insulted,” I said. “She’s known me three months.”
“See?” Said CaCee. “We had to let you—”
“But why would you never just come to me?” I said, trying to stay still for Rita as she worked on my hair. “Say, ‘This is too much, Jess. We’re gonna have to take it to the next level.’ Because I would do that to you guys. For you guys, I mean. Why would you be scared to talk to me? I’m not gonna be mad at you.”
“Like now?” asked CaCee.
“I mean, I am out with all y’all in different places, ordering drinks and you’re ordering drinks, too,” I said, on the defensive. “Why wouldn’t you just be like, ‘Let’s not drink tonight.’ ”
They were quiet. A long beat.
I broke the silence. “I mean, I would have probably laughed at you . . .”
Everyone laughed, even Rita. “But then I would have known it was worrying you.” It didn’t break my heart that I was such a mess that they wanted to intervene. It broke my heart that they felt they had to go behind my back. But they were right. I had deeper problems than alcohol, and I couldn’t resolve the problem until I threw away the crutch.
“Guys, I think we should pray,” said Stephanie. She has been with me since we were kids going to Heights Baptist in Texas. She knew what faith means to me.
I stood, foils still in my hair, and the four of us held hands.
“Lord, she’s giving this burden to you,” Stephanie said. Koko gripped my hand tight.
“I’m giving this to you,” I said. “I am your humble servant and—”
A ding went off. Rita’s timer.
“Okay, you gave it to God,” Rita said. “We gotta wash that stuff out now. Or you will look like Andy Warhol.”
She rinsed me out, just as Nikki and Riawna arrived to put in my extensions. They are the co-owners of Nine Zero One, a big salon in West Hollywood. I know, this story only gets more over-the-top, but so was my life. We were getting set up in the wooden chair in my study when Lauren came in.
I was crying, tears pouring from my eyes, and we just exchanged a look that said it was time. She told me she lined up the call with the doctor. “She’s ready now. Are you?”
“Yes,” I said, looking up at Nikki and Riawna. They nodded. I didn’t hesitate for a second. I trusted them and I knew now was my time. Besides, I didn’t care who heard my truth. I was tired of letting shame dictate my actions. And do you know how hard it is to schedule Nikki and Riawna?
Once I was on the phone with the doctor, I started in with a complete play-by-play of all my life’s traumas. The sexual abuse I suffered in childhood, and the abusive, obsessive relationships I clung to in adulthood. I was crying, the women doing my extensions were crying, and my friends were a mess. Still, I reeled off everything in a matter-of-fact manner, connecting dots about why each event had contributed to my anxiety, finally ending with, “So this is why I need help and why I can’t do this on my own.”
I paused to breathe.
“Wow,” the doctor said.
My eyebrows shot up. Was I that bad?
“First of all,” she continued, “people don’t know themselves that well. And the fact that you don’t know me, and you’re telling me all this on the phone tells me you are desperate.”
I wasn’t trying to get an A in breaking down. She said a lot of people who use alcohol as a temporary coping mechanism generally aren’t aware of what they’re covering up, so the abuse becomes permanent. Knowing what I had to face was a good sign for me.
She lined up a nurse and another therapist to come over that very night. In the meantime, we moved every drop of alcohol out of the house, but we didn’t really need to bother. I had no craving for it. I was mad at it. I was starting to feel. Like, Oh, this is what it felt like to be living.
The therapist came and hesitated in the doorway like the exorcist coming to cast out the demons. The house was dark, and I led her to my study, right where I am writing to you now. I thought she was stiff at first and spoke so softly I could barely hear her, but she was just getting the lay of the land. Eric had the fireplace going for us, and we sat across from each other.
“So,” she said, “let’s talk about what’s brought you to this point.”
And the work began. To walk forward through my anxiety, I first had to look back to understand what pain I was running from, and what I was trying to hide.
2
Singing My Life
June 1982
I don’t remember the accident. I was a month shy of turning two years old, so I have to borrow the details of this memory from my mother.
She was driving near our home in Fort Worth. It was just us in Dad’s heap of a car, a 1964 Chevy Nova with a rust paint job. It was so old there were no seatbelts in the back, and I would constantly shift across the cracked vinyl.
I wanted to go to McDonald’s, and my mom didn’t seem to understand how serious I was about this. I stood on the backseat and leaned so I could throw my arms around her, grabbing her face with both hands to yell, “McDonald’s!”
“Jessica!” she screamed. She looked away from the road. How long? A second? Two? Enough to drive across the lane and hit a car coming toward us.
I flew headfirst at the windshield. I went halfway through it, cracking my skull on the way. The drag of the glass held me, and I fell back inside the car, landing on the floorboard on the passenger side. The shattered windshield then fell on me in a shower of glass. Mom had a bone sticking out of her broken leg. She had also broken her arm and collarbone. She couldn’t get out of the driver’s side, so she climbed over me to pull herself out. Sitting on the ground, she brushed glass off me, not sure if I was alive.
A good Samaritan ran over to help us. An ambulance came and rushed us to the hospital, and thankfully no one in the other car was injured.
Someone at the hospital called my dad and told him his wife was in the hospital. “Your baby is in critical condition.” I had two purple-black eyes, and a very bad concussion. My mom stayed in the hospital for a week.
My stutter started soon after, and the doctors said it was from the head injury. My mom said that when I stuttered it looked like my brain and I were trying to say ten things at once. My voice just wouldn’t work.
“You can’t focus on the one idea you need to talk about,” she told me. “Just say the one thing, Jess.” She is the youngest of three—the Drew girls of McGregor, Texas—and her middle sister Connie was a speech therapist. Aunt Connie advised her to get me to calm down.