Facing the Music

by Jennifer Knapp

  At last, I opened the door, fully broken and in tears. “I love you, Dad,” was all I said, and I was gone.

  For the next few months I bounced between both sets of my grandparents’ care. I spent my days fiendishly working minimum wage jobs and my nights drinking down my anger. As the summer came to a close, all of my grandparents were urging me to live up to the potential they had imagined for me. They loved me and wanted me to succeed, but I was going nowhere. I needed a plan other than nursing hangovers on their sofas.

  It was early August, college should have been starting soon, and they were all wondering where I was going to go. After all, I was a smart, talented kid, and music had been my life. I had all but forgotten about the scholarship that was waiting for me at nearby Pittsburg State, but my grandparents urged me on. They weren’t going to let me waste the opportunity. They did their best to lovingly kick me out of the nest and remind me what I had been working for. Together, we scrounged up enough money, and borrowed a car to get me started for at least the first semester. After that, I’d have to grow up and figure out how to make it work on my own.

  six

  I was glad to have finally made my way to college, but I didn’t have the kind of enthusiasm I saw in my fellow students. While the other girls in my dorm were busy settling in, I felt lost in the blur of an experience that I had barely any time to prepare for. As usual, I dealt with the stress of it by getting lost in the boozy freshman party scene.

  I had managed to enroll in my music education courses, but classes and performances were only the backdrop to the life I was truly living. I’d stumble through my days, but each night I went out to party. I didn’t really have enough cash to keep up my habit, but soon enough I’d found a way to keep happily numb. With a little flirtation and promise of a good time, I could usually find an accommodating fellow who would gladly pay for my drinks. We’d party all night, eventually make our way back to his dorm room, car, or frat house, and the rest was predictable, if not absolutely shameful. Most of the time, I could scarcely remember what happened the night before or who I had been with. I often awoke in some strange place in the wee hours of the morning, woozy and used, unable to recognize or even recall the name of the man lying next to me. I’d manage to skulk my way back into the dorm, oftentimes to the visible and vocal horror of the girl who lived across the hall.

  Ami and I met the first week in Tanner Hall. She was a soft-spoken and reserved girl who seemed marginally shocked by my rough demeanor. No doubt I spoke with a steady stream of obscenities during our first encounter. I was eager to get to know where the local nightlife was happening, while she was quick to let me know that she was a Christian.

  I found her strange. I’d never really met anyone that was so particular about describing themselves in such a way. As I sat in her room, it was clear to me that she not only acted differently than most people I had known, she also had a peculiar and obvious interest in Jesus. The walls of her tiny room were covered in religious paraphernalia. Her room was littered with crosses, not to mention dozens of posters awash in pastel colors and ornately printed inspirational sayings.

  In our odd little friendship, Ami would become the gatekeeper of my shame. As I cycled through an almost daily ritual of alcohol-fueled depression, sexual encounters, and hangovers, she seemed to keep a tally on my ignoble escapades. I rarely returned to my room undetected. It was as though she took on the role of a full-length mirror. As I struggled to put the key into my lock each morning, she’d open her door, both glad to see that I had made it home from whatever dangerous liaison I had had the night before, but also with a stern mixture of disgust and pity. In her face, I could see the emotion that I would feel later on when I had sobered up. I wasn’t in any way happy with what I was doing, I honestly felt ashamed of myself, but more chilling was that I was scared of how out of control I was. Every new day that I opened my eyes came with a shuddering reality that I was playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, risking pregnancy, disease, and potentially violent encounters. I would awake, depressed and aware of what was happening, but it seemed that I couldn’t control myself. When was I going to get myself into a situation that I could not endure?

  In the odds hours between drinks, I would confess my sins to Ami. She was the one friend to whom I told my truths, and I received some portion of truth in return. She spoke aloud what I already was starting to accept, that this behavior had the potential to kill me. I was starring in my own tragic drama. Like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, I was on the verge of drinking myself to death. I was no longer able to regulate the choices that I wanted to make. I’d vow to stop, succeeding in only a few odd days at a time, only to wake up in again in some strange place, with little recognition of how or what I had done to get there.

  I was at such a desperate point that I needed outside help. I was no longer the master of my own choices. I wasn’t entirely certain if I wanted to live, but I was stunned by how Ami continued to insist that I had a better life ahead of me than where I currently found myself. Day after day she continued to listen to my sob stories, often nursing my hangovers, so that I could make enough classes to avoid getting kicked out of school. Occasionally, she would rescue me from further injury by pulling me out of the local bars before I was too sloppy to move. She was a kind soul, but her patience was wearing thin. I relied on her like a backstop to keep me from completely destroying myself but, at some point, she insisted, I had to make a decision to help myself. I could see the truth of it, but I had gotten to the point where I felt powerless against my own will.

  One night, in one of the most violent episodes of alcohol poisoning I had experienced, I had found myself immobilized on the dorm room floor of one of my dorm mates. I had become so ill I could no longer hold up my own head to avoid drowning in my own filth. The people I had been partying with had abandoned me. They had placed my head in a trash can and vacated the room. Word had gotten out, and soon Ami was standing in the doorway. I will never forget seeing her standing there, hands on hips. I was terrified. I don’t know if I actually said the words aloud, but I pleaded with her, “Don’t let me die like Elvis,” and I meant it. I truly thought I was going to die there.

  I don’t remember what she said, but I will never forget the vision of her standing over me. Her expression was all I needed to know that she had had enough. And then she was gone. I closed my eyes for what I figured was probably the last time.

  I was surprised to awake the next day. I got through the night, but it would take several days for my body to recover. ­Bedridden, dehydrated, and finally ready to admit that I was a fractured human being, I began reading some of the Scriptures that Ami had dared to share with me over the previous months. She’d written several pages of verses that called upon themes of redemption. I had always been skeptical about all her talk of Jesus, so I’m amazed as anyone that I engaged in any of it. I don’t know why I bothered, except that I had no other earthly clue as to what to do next. I had to admit though, some of the words resonated with me.

  By His wounds we are healed.

  The Lord is my light and my salvation—

  whom shall I fear?

  The Lord is the stronghold of my life—

  of whom shall I be afraid?

  He will rescue them from oppression and violence,

  for precious is their blood in his sight.

  My ego may have cringed with cynicism, but the poetry touched me to the core. I wanted to have my life back, I wanted to be counted among the living again. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to find a way to respect myself again. I began to well up with the awareness that if I wanted to survive and stabilize my life I was going to have to make a serious attempt at change. Surely this wasn’t who I was?

  Part of my journey back was recognizing that I had developed a very serious alcohol problem. It may seem like it should go without saying, but I hadn’t fully acknowledged that I had a dependency problem. I
just thought that I was a slutty lush. Despite the fact that I wanted to stop drinking, I would find that I could only go a couple of days before I’d be beside myself with agitation, depression, and general anxiety. I didn’t know how to manage my mind or my body. When I was sober I felt ill-equipped to manage even the most modest of my stresses and worries. The only way I knew to get relief was to have a few drinks. Despite my best efforts, I was really struggling with staying sober. It wasn’t Ami’s job to keep watch over me; besides, I had worn her out. It was pretty clear that I wasn’t capable of doing this alone, so I decided I needed to get some help.

  At first, I looked into the on-campus mental health options. I had no money to sink into what I imagined would be costly psychological support, so I stopped by the university health center and shyly leafed through the pamphlets on display. There were a few meetings for students who talked about how to adjust to college life, but mostly they were just social get-togethers. It wasn’t enough. I was on the brink of death, and a few donuts and free coffee weren’t going to cut it. One of the on-campus leaders suggested that I might be clinically depressed and in need of individualized care.

  Fortunately, I discovered that there were income-based mental health services available through the county. State-funded therapists who were better equipped to deal with the significant problems I was having. I decided to invest in the services of a professional therapist.

  One afternoon, I skipped classes and went to my first appointment. I had no idea what I needed or how I could be helped. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone in my fight any more. When the receptionist handed me my first round of paperwork, I answered a whole host of intake questions as if I were in a life-dependent exam.

  How much do you drink a day?

  Do you ever think of suicide? How often?

  I remember looking down at the million-dollar question on the page: What is the reason for your wanting counseling?

  Sick to my stomach and shaking, I wrote: I am afraid I am going to kill myself.

  There it was. My fear, finally written down in black and white.

  It wasn’t until I began meeting with my new therapist that I began to realize what a serious situation I had gotten myself into. I was in shock when, after the debrief of my first intake, she assessed that I was an alcoholic. I fought the diagnosis.

  “Listen, I’m just really sad. I’ve got daddy issues and just need someone to talk to,” I insisted. The thought that I was this dark thing, incapable of handling my drink, made me angry. I didn’t understand that part of what was happening was that my body had become dependent on having alcohol in my system, and that I was using booze as a drug in an attempt to keep on an even keel. I had spent so long filling my body with alcohol that when I didn’t have alcohol in my system, I developed withdrawal symptoms.

  My counselor laid down the new world order. She insisted that I needed to be in therapy every week and strongly recommended that I attend AA meetings. I signed in thinking that she was going to help me with depression—I was willing to admit that alcohol was my method of coping with it—but I was looking for my therapist to be a neutral shoulder that I could lean on. I thought that if I spent some time talking about my horrible childhood and generally confessing the guilt of my sexual sins that that would be enough. Her assessment that I needed treatment for alcoholism angered me. I wanted help, but this was more than I had bargained for.

  After a few sporadic sessions, I went back to self-medicating in a rebellion-fueled binge before I began to consider that she might be onto something. I wanted to get over this hump. I wanted to live. I found myself limping back to my therapist in defeat. At first all I could manage was sitting in her office for an hour unable to speak. Finally, one day, she leaned forward, looked me in the eye as seriously as any human being had ever dared, and laid it out.

  “You want help?” she asked sternly. “Then here’s what’s going to happen. You get serious and start engaging in the options we’ve got that can help you. You have to start dealing with your problems. You can’t just sit here and cry. You’ve got to start going to the AA meetings we’ve discussed. You have to start making some choices that are different from the ones you’re making now.”

  The pit of my stomach began to burn with rage. I didn’t want to be there anymore. But she had one more thing to say.

  “Jennifer, I’m this close to intervening here and putting you in the hospital. You plug in, or what happens next is me filing to have you involuntarily committed.”

  I had no idea if that was possible, but I was eighteen years old and her words finally got through to me.

  “You have a choice to make. Detox in AA or in the hospital. Either way, that’s what’s next.”

  I was humiliated, but she was right. I needed to put in the same time, energy, and effort into staying sober every day as I had done in the days of keeping numb. She reminded me that miserable was miserable for the time being, that as much as getting straight might hurt, there would be a better outcome to sobriety than the current path I was on. There is a kind of pain that leads to healing and a kind that leads to destruction. I had known the latter, but was I willing to try the former?

  So it was that I spent the next several weeks camped out at local AA meetings. I don’t remember much of it, mostly just feeling queasy, jittery, and pretty arrogant, convinced that I was nothing like what I imagine to be a sorry lot of ladies who had gathered together to bemoan their waning lives. Every one in my group was middle-aged, had fairly serious social problems, and other drug dependencies that were beyond my ability to empathize with. I probably could have used a group that had a demographic and experience similar to my own, but I suspect that most of the folks in this particular group were under the same kind of arrangement as I was, being somewhat mandated to attend rather than truly looking for change.

  I didn’t engage, but it was a safe place for me to stare into oblivion for an hour or so, and there was free coffee. In the end, upon getting past the detox phase, what became evident was that I had a brokenness in my spirit more than I had an addiction.

  I didn’t end up relating too much in the group setting, but I was finding ways to get in touch with my own reality. I found that I wasn’t dying to get back to the bottle as much as I was eager to move on with my life. I stuck with my therapist for a year or so, but after detoxing, AA became more of a reminder of my old ways rather than a useful tool for moving on. I started to get it into my mind that in order to move forward, I needed a clean slate. I began to get restless and hungry for some way to eradicate the shame of the life I had been living and into a new life that was fresh, clean, and new.

  One night, in an insomnia-fed rage of frenetic energy, I went to Ami, as I often did, and begged her to keep me company so I wouldn’t go on a bender. I was pacing around the room, fully exhausted, but still sober. I didn’t want to give up on myself, but I was losing the strength to be alone. I didn’t want to drink, but I wanted to drink, and so on. I had all this nervous energy, uncertainty, and anxiety that I was going through, and I wanted someone to help me with the burden. While she continued to be appreciative and supportive of my journey to get clean, she was also very clear that there were just some burdens too great for a human being to manage. She pointed me to a Scripture that blew my mind:

  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed, the new has come.

  —2 Corinthians 5:17

  Part of me was frustrated that all she could ever do is point me to Jesus, give me this verse or that, but every time it stirred up a sense of possibility in me that I couldn’t deny. Maybe I was a sucker; I didn’t care. I needed to get my shit straight and I was running out of steam on my own. Other people were only going to be able to carry me so far. Maybe she was right; no one could save me but God.

  “All right then, what do I need to do? How does this work?” I asked.

  I couldn�
�t believe what was coming out of my mouth. I was so scared. I was afraid I had finally been cracked by the Christian crazies, but my mouth kept going.

  “How do I get saved?” popped out. What? Who falls for this?

  It was like an out-of-body experience. I couldn’t believe that I was falling for this crap, but I couldn’t stop myself. I truly, deeply, and sincerely wanted to know. I needed to have faith again. I needed hope. I needed . . . I wanted . . . to be saved.

  And so we prayed. Ami led me in a ritual prayer known among evangelicals as The Sinner’s Prayer or The Prayer of Salvation. There’s no specific script, but the basics must include acknowledging your sinful nature and repenting (that is, expressing remorse for your ungodly behavior). You must also recognize and name Jesus as the Lord of your life, recognizing that by the act of his sacrificial crucifixion, the Son of God took the punishment you would have otherwise deserved. It is through this confession and this recognition that you become saved, but you must also be willing to complete the pact by moving forward and living for God’s purpose rather than your own.

  I prayed my prayer, having no earthly clue what I was saying, but I prayed in earnest all the same. And whether it was real or imagined, all I can say is that I did truly feel as if my life began again that day. When I lifted my head and opened my eyes, it seemed I was filled with a joyous, almost electric, energy unlike anything I had ever experienced. My whole body felt unfamiliar and refreshed. My head was clear for the first time in a very long time. Everything looked as bright and vivid as a high-definition television. All of a sudden, I understood what it must have been like for Paul when the scales fell from his eyes (Acts 9). After that day, in the new language taught to me by my fellow friends of the faith, I was reborn.