The surgery took two hours longer than planned. Post-op, I was sent to recover at a luxury hotel near the doctor’s office. I know, people call it Hollyweird, but it’s a thing here that folks recover from plastic surgery with aftercare services at hotels. I couldn’t believe they just did the surgery and practically sent you home. I still had two drains with pouches to collect blood.
It did not go well. I got an infection—colitis—and was vomiting so much I thought I was going to bust my sutures. My mom and Eric were so worried. They had to rush me to Cedars, and I secretly stayed there for nine days. Doctors talked seriously about me needing a blood transfusion. It was so hard on Eric, who was convinced he should have talked me out of going through with the surgery. Eric loved me at any size or shape, even if I couldn’t.
I recovered, and yes, my stomach looked great. I felt like myself again. But I can tell you that plastic surgery does not cure what’s inside. Really, it’s about how you feel emotionally, and I was still just as hard on myself once those stitches were out. I still had work to do.
I DECIDED THAT 2016 WAS GOING TO BE THE YEAR THAT I COMMITTED TO my music and to songwriting. I needed to save myself, get to know myself again. I wanted to start journaling again, pick up a pen and confront who I had become and challenge myself to be better. I had mostly stopped when I was so tormented by John. The longer I waited, the more of a reckoning it would be. I was in a position where I had my own studio in my house, and I could pay producers and songwriters to come and work with me. This way my kids could see what their mom actually did for a living.
But opening that new Mead notebook to write with other people in the room was like summoning all my ghosts. “Places everyone.” I was taking my memories, trying to put them to music in a room with people I had never met in my life. I know that there are songwriters who treat it like a job. For me, it’s ministry. I sat on the floor of the recording studio, trying to write the story of my life so that I could help others. About the heartache of a failed marriage, of giving yourself over to someone who tortured you. Songwriting takes me to an honest place, and honestly, I was in a dark place. I just didn’t know it until the words came out of me. Before I even knew how heartbroken I was about my parents, the words spilled out of me. Wait, I’m heartbroken? I thought.
To prepare, I drank before the songwriting sessions, and during, and then after to recover. The alcohol helped me go to the painful place, but then it started to hold me back. When I sang, it wasn’t the same as when I was younger. I was scared, and fear kept me from being wholly there.
I kept putting the music off, then coasted into the next year as I focused on the kids and the Collection. It was easy to invest my time in kids and the business. As much I was my own worst enemy, I did everything I could to be present for my children.
In September 2016, my father called to tell me that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’d been told that if he didn’t have surgery, he had six months to live.
“So, you’re having the surgery,” I said, gulping from a glittercup.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
I couldn’t believe my father would consider not fighting. He was spiraling, and I didn’t know how to help him, I wasn’t a doctor, so all I could do was remind him what he taught me to do. To have faith and know that it’s all going to be okay. But you have to fight. You can’t give up. I was still recovering from losing him as a manager, but losing my father altogether was something I just couldn’t fathom.
He set the date for the surgery. My poor mother still loved him, and I know she felt powerless. For thirty-five years, she’d helped him, nursing him through every cold and flu. And now, when he needed her most, he didn’t want her there. I felt the pressure to take her place. To be that mother figure, a wife to my own dad.
The morning of the surgery, I brought alcohol with me to the hospital. Seven a.m. and I was drinking to calm my anxiety. Ashlee was there, along with Jonathan and Dad’s best friend Randy. The doctor told us that during the surgery, they discovered the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. He had stage IV cancer.
Through the anxiety, I tried to be present and take in the information. I was supposed to be filling in for my mom. As he got treatment, I would relay the information to her, feeling like I was failing them both somehow by not doing enough. I realize now that when I thought I was escaping my feelings of responsibility by drinking, I was actually making things so much worse. It was a dark time, but not being sober for it exaggerated every problem when I just could have dealt with it head-on. Still, his recovery forced a needed reconnection for me with my dad.
Soon after, my doctor informed me that he could no longer prescribe me both the stimulant and the Ambien. I think he was afraid that I’d die. I had to choose, and for me it was to sleep or not to sleep. It was a come to Jesus moment, where I had to ask myself, Which controls me more? My vanity or my fear?
I chose to keep the Ambien. I was terrified of not being able to hit the Off switch at night.
As soon as my prescription for the stimulant ran out, my drinking caught up with me. I would pass out, so I made a concerted effort to stay “with it” until the kids’ bedtime. I was less focused and increasingly unable to hide the effects. So I hid, staying out of the public eye as much as possible.
I did take one trip, visiting Nana in Texas for her eighty-fifth birthday. It was harder now for her to get around. She’d gone into a nursing home, but she didn’t like it and left. Her whippersnapper heart rebelling even with her slowing body. Back home, she used a walker and would amble with it to the driveway, park it next to her car, and slide into the driver’s seat. “I drive around for an hour,” she said, “then come back, and the walker is right there waiting for me.”
“I don’t know how safe that is, Nana,” I said. But I knew the feeling. When your world shrinks, you make adjustments. My anxiety had shrunk my world to my house.
When I did go out, I didn’t have a sense of how clear it was that I was having issues. In late May, I went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to promote the Collection, making an appearance I have never watched. I admit I drank beforehand and was also on steroids for a chest infection that made me hoarse. I was nervous, but I’d always been able to turn it on for talk shows. Instead, I couldn’t find Ellen’s rhythm, mumbling and second-guessing everything I was saying.
At first, Ellen tried to help, and then she gave up. Her blank stare at my conversational freefall was tough love. Ellen didn’t say anything to me after. I awkwardly walked off the stage and took in the look on the face of my publicist and friend Lauren.
“Uhh,” she said.
“Did I not do good?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“You could have done better,” she said, which is probably the most critical thing this kind woman has ever said to me. I want to say it here to Ellen and the viewers: I’m truly sorry. I disrespected them by trying to make an appearance when I had no business doing so.
My friends began their plans for interventions. I picture them two by two, first dancing around the subject with each other, then gripping each other’s arms in solidarity. They felt powerless, afraid that if they confronted me, I would shut them out. Lauren put together a plan of action for when I was ready, discreetly collecting the numbers of people who specialize in rehab and counseling.