Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (31 page)

“You know, Jason . . . if I’m able to leave rehab with even an ounce more self-esteem than I have now,” I told him, “this relationship will be over.”

He was silent; he was never one to say much, especially if the talk was serious. He had his own codependent reasons why he needed me as much as I needed him, I learned in therapy, so I’m sure my breakup prediction scared him. And he had the same difficulty letting go of people as I did, which was one reason why he couldn’t let go of that other relationship, he had told me.

But what few words he did say as he hugged me before leaving that night were, to his credit, very good ones—“I love you, Deb.”

SO NOW MY
father was driving his good little church girl to rehab. What would the people at church think?

As I lay in the backseat, I drunkenly thought of Wotan and Brünnhilde and couldn’t shake that father-daughter story out of my brain. Wotan had a temper, and he had punished her, his favorite child, when she didn’t deserve it. But in my haze I remembered something else. At Brünnhilde’s final request, Wotan created a ring of magical fire to surround her and protect her, to keep away all but the bravest of heroes from his girl. It’s what I always yearned for, growing up, for my father to watch out for me and be my protector instead of the one I was afraid of. In the same way that I yearned for a loving and forgiving God, not a judgmental, punishing one. My father was trying to help me now, I knew.

Once we got there Dad handled all the admitting, during which they removed any perfumes or hairsprays from my suitcase. I went into twenty-four-hour detox, which I don’t remember at all, but a fellow “inmate” later told me I kept rubbing my legs, saying, “I’m going to jump out of my skin!” The next day, I woke up at 6:20 a.m. with a roommate sleeping ten feet away in a “dorm” room that consisted of two single beds, a sink, a mirror, two sets of drawers, and
a tiny bathroom. Someone was banging on the door—my wake-up call. Once again, the glamorous life of an opera diva.

In rehab they want you awake and moving early to help break old patterns and start new ones. The first thing we did every morning was a group meditation (the size of the group varied each day between eight and thirty patients) and then we read aloud from the
Twenty-Four Hours a Day
book, a collection of daily thoughts, meditations, and prayers known as “the little black book.” Then came a reading of the Serenity Prayer—I knew that one by heart—then a day full of private and group therapy appointments and exercises. Each day ended with an AA meeting and someone coming into your room with a flashlight, shining it in your face, making sure you were in the proper bed where you belonged—alone.

We were sorted in groups by sex and age—mine was the women’s Boomer group, for thirty-five years and up—and no cross-fraternization between groups was allowed. To get to the swimming pool, the Boomers had to walk past the Young Men’s unit (ages seventeen to thirty) and we were given strict instructions to cover up—no Daisy Dukes allowed. Apparently the only thing wilder than a pack of young men drinking was a pack of young men trying
not
to drink. As evidenced by the night they went skinny-dipping in the entranceway’s ten-foot fountain and showed up at breakfast one morning with Mohawks. And they weren’t even
drunk.

AT THE START
of every group meeting, we each had to say our name, our addiction, and a “feeling” word for how we felt at that moment. My word alternated among three:
afraid
,
sad
, and
pissed off
. (“Technically that’s
two
words,” someone yelled out. Which pissed me off even more.)

Hi, I’m Debbie. I’m addicted to food, alcohol, and men. I’m terrified.

Hiiiii, Debbieeeeee!

Over the next month, I would get to know these strangers better
than I knew my own family or myself, as we shared secrets and played “trust” games together.

For one exercise, we partnered up and took turns blindfolding each other and leading the other around the hallways and the outside gardens of the facility using only voice commands. The goal was for the blindfolded one to trust that the speaker would keep her safe and not let her fall off a curb or walk into oncoming traffic—your life was in their hands.

My partner was Betty, a petite loner from Florida who had white-blond, pixie-short hair and a tan that never faded. She was there on a court mandate because “I took an Ambien one night and the car took a ride with me in it,” she’d say. She always left out the part where she punched a cop and slugged a paramedic after smashing her car into something, going fast. In rehab, I was surprised to find a handful of inmates still in denial about being alcoholic—even after they’d wrapped their cars around telephone poles and were wait-listed for a liver transplant due to cirrhosis of the liver. Betty came from big money and was socially awkward, so I picked her to be my “lead-around” because I figured no one else would ask her. Also, I had a slight soft spot for her—she’d go to the meeting rooms early each day and play the piano.

“Okay, turn to your left, Debbie,” Betty commanded for the exercise. “Now turn right—no stop,
stop
! Okay, follow my voice, I’m here, I’m here . . . follow my voice, follow my voice, follow my voice. . . . Okay, now reach up to feel the tree next to you . . . a little higher, a little higher . . .”

I wasn’t one to trust easily, but that was the point of the exercise. With my eyes shut and Betty’s voice beckoning, I had to surrender to her help.

Next it was Betty’s turn to be blindfolded. This time, I had to lead her by touch and no talking. I pulled her by the hand, I put her hand on the railing by the stairs, I tapped her hand on surfaces so she’d know what they were. The interesting surprise to me about
this exercise was how I went from feeling completely vulnerable and dependent when blindfolded to now feeling very protective of Betty. It was as if first I was her child, then she was mine.

After the exercise was over and all the blindfolds were off, I turned to smile warmly at Betty—the exercise had made me feel close to her. But she had already turned away and was sprinting for the common room to reserve her favorite spot on the couch. I was flabbergasted! I had allowed myself to trust and be vulnerable and care for her—and then she abandoned me! This was another learning experience that we discussed later in “group.” For me, that was my typical pattern; to love someone who was not “there” for me. The overall lesson of the exercise was that you can’t recover alone; you have to surround yourself with people you trust. And you have to trust yourself.

Connecting with others was an all-important ability I needed to learn. I realized in private therapy that I had difficulty making and keeping intimate friends—that was one reason why I depended on a man, any man, to fill that void. My initial instinct, even in rehab, was to stay holed up in my room, reading or studying the stacks of music I had brought with me (I was set to sing
Isolde
as soon as I got out, as the season-opener at the Washington National Opera).

“You need to put your singing down for a day and go hang out with the others and talk with them,” said my counselor, Daniella. “It’s what you’re here for. You need to learn how to establish these relationships.”

When I entered rehab, I learned about biological and genetic factors that made one prone to addiction. No one else in my immediate family was an alcoholic, but I had one cousin who was, and another cousin who struggled with drug addiction. I also underwent a psychological analysis that showed that I had an enormous problem with self-esteem and depression . . . and, at the same time, an egocentric personality. I had no idea the two dynamics could go together in one person! Unfortunately, the combination of both helped keep my
addiction going. The low self-esteem made me want to drink to blot out the pain, and the fact that I could still perform despite it all, despite spending all night sloshed and under a suicide watch, halfway around the world, without anyone detecting it, fed my ego.

Both low self-esteem and ego also led to me cutting myself off from people, said Daniella, which led to isolation and loneliness and then . . . eating, drinking, sex. I had to stop isolating myself, she said, and I had to start stopping right now.

The others at rehab hung out after dinner on the “smoking patio”—where the cool kids of any age, anyplace, always hung out. I’d hear them talking outside my window while I was inside my little bunker, studying my German libretto and torturing myself with Isolde’s tragic love life. I love these characters, but after so much pain, can’t any of these brilliant male composers ever reward these tortured women with a happy ending? Minnie was the only one who came to mind who got her happy ending.

I did what my counselor suggested and forced myself to venture out onto the patio in my sweats, ponytail, no makeup, and glasses—a total nerd at the cool kids’ table. And soon they were politely asking me the questions about myself that I’d been dodging since I got there. But there was no avoiding allowed in rehab. They all knew I was some sort of singer; that came out in one of our earlier group chats. Out of politeness, someone pursued it now:

“So, what else do you do besides sing? I mean, to support yourself.”

“I sing.”

“That’s all you do? You don’t wait tables or . . .”

“No. I sing. That’s what I do.”

“What kind of music do you sing?” someone else asked.

“Opera.”

“What do you mean, you sing opera?” asked another. She was on to me. “Do you . . . do you sing it at the Metropolitan Opera?”

“Um, yes.”

There was an energy surge among the group, and someone asked another, related question, which led to me saying, quietly, “Well, actually, yeah, I just won a Grammy Award for that.”

“What?” asked another. “WHAT?! You won a Grammy? Why are you not saying that proudly, out loud, for all of us to hear you?”

I started to cry.

“This is one of my problems,” I said to them. “I’ve been able to accomplish all that I have, but I feel like shit about myself.”

They all nodded, and each could relate in their own way. I was beginning to see how this talking to people thing worked.

The next day, Daniella and I discussed my accomplishments, and she pointed out that drinking was a way for me to sabotage myself. I had great success in my career, but I didn’t know how to embrace it, so I had to kill it. I’d let opportunities escape me as well, because I didn’t think I deserved them and was afraid of being
too
successful. Any more success would lead to the dreaded pride the Bible talked about, and then that big fall I was warned about a thousand times.

Well, I fell anyway—so the joke was on me.

Daniella and I examined a few interviews I’d given that we found on the Internet, and she pointed to one answer I repeated again and again.

How did you become an opera singer?
asked the journalist.

It was sheer luck. I took one step after another.

“Bullshit,” I said out loud.

“Why is it bullshit, Debbie?”

“Because I worked my fucking ass off. You don’t rise to this level without having an innately wonderful gift from a higher power, coupled with working your ass off.”

But it was something I never gave myself credit for and instead belittled myself. We went on to talk about God, men, and my parents. The root of my pain that started me overeating, I would learn,
probably had to do with my father’s belittling of my mother, and the anger, fear, insecurity, abandonment, and control I felt in our house growing up.

Through a lot of tears, I realized I had to find forgiveness for my father and his past anger. It dawned on me that he had been asking for it for quite a few years—in the car that day in San Francisco, and with the letter he wrote to me during my first Brünnhilde. I also had to find forgiveness for my mother and her more passive, frail nature, which always made me feel like I had to protect her instead of the other way around. I now saw my parents as kids themselves—they were seventeen and eighteen when they had me!—trying to raise children and doing the best they could, however flawed, as all parents are.

Near the end of my stay at rehab, we had “family week.” Mom, Dad, and Lynn came in and did two days of therapy with a counselor; they were also free to ask other patients questions about their alcoholism without me there.

“As is the case with all addiction,” the counselors told them, “alcoholism affects the entire family. It’s not only the addict who must deal with this problem.” They also told my parents that whatever unresolved issues that were still lingering between them were still affecting me.

On the third day, they added me to the mix. I walked into a conference room to find the three of them and two counselors seated around a U-shaped table. Dad and Lynn were on one side with an empty chair next to them, Mom sat directly across from them with an empty chair next to her, and the counselors were at the bottom part of the “U”.

To say it was awkward would be an understatement. I felt like I was in the middle of some sort of experimental, psychological, family dynamic test.
Where the hell should I sit? This could be a very political move.

I looked over at my mother and she gave me one of her bright
smiles, but tinged with worry. God, it was a comfort to see her face. In her late sixties now, Mom was still pretty and voluptuous, as always. She gave me one of those reassuring mom-smiles, the kind filled with unconditional love that spoke volumes. It said:
I know you like only a mother knows her child. You will get through this. I love you.

Mom and I had been through a lot together over the years and, in a way, we grew up together. Whatever struggles we had separately or with each other, I always knew one fact for sure about my roller-coaster, erratic life: She was a constant and consistent force. We had a special, sister-like solidarity, a natural instinct to look out for and protect each other in the trenches of life’s war zone.

I had no other choice. I went over and took the seat next to my mother.