I really wish I had a camera was a thought that lived in my mind the entire time I was at one of the treatment facilities I stayed at in 2020.
I spent five weeks in this facility, and though my memory of my arrival there is spotty, there are several snapshot moments of this experience I hope I never forget.
This is one of them.
“Karaoke? Here in a rehab? No way. You’ve gotta be kidding me.” I laughed while chatting with my friend Andy. Andy is this massive 6’5″ radiant personality I still get to text with to this day. We were in line for lunch at the cafeteria after finishing one of our group therapy sessions. There were eager murmurs among fellow residents that one of the staff members said she would bring in a mic and speaker set if we, the people who miraculously hadn’t killed themselves in recent weeks, were willing to do karaoke during her shift supervising us on Friday night.
It was early summer in 2020. After flipping my car upside down on Bardstown Road in Louisville, KY, I ended up in this treatment facility. The idea of going from barely wanting to be alive to singing into a mic in front of other people without a single drop of alcohol in my body was wild. I mean, I had to be locked away in a treatment facility because I couldn’t bring myself to stop drinking safely. Now, these people want to get me to sing along to a song on a microphone?
So many thoughts ran through my mind in response to this idea: What if I’m not fun to others and I just bore them? I’m not good enough to get up in front of others and just be. I like my singing voice, but I’m scared it’s not good enough to be a strong voice and that I can’t be silly enough to be comically bad for karaoke. Is there even such a thing as fun without alcohol? I’d like to watch others try. I love karaoke, but me? Sober? I’ll have to pass.
As we sat down to eat, Danielle, the staff member the buzz was about, approached our table. As usual, she was beaming, “Did y’all hear about karaoke on Friday? You ready, Jess?” She looked me in the eyes and smiled, which slowed the racing panic of my detoxing brain.
Danielle always put me at ease because her lived experience instilled hope that this repetitive cycle I found myself in would one day stop. In Drowning in Shallow Water: Chapter 1, I share how I learned that Danielle had also lost her partner to a drug overdose. Despite this loss, she was sober and working with others. Danielle gave me hope that I could find joy and love after losing my boyfriend, Ian. Her lived experience and confidence in how she conducted herself made me think, Maybe I can try this karaoke thing on Friday night.
I turned my face to Danielle, smiled while hesitantly shrugging my shoulders, and said, “I really don’t want to do it, but since you’re putting it together, Danielle, I’ll try it.”
“You won’t regret this, Jess!” Danielle declared.
And dammit, she was right.
On Friday night, Danielle came in for her shift. She decorated the residential lounge area, turned the overhead lights off, and connected her karaoke machine to her phone. As the music started playing and I felt the bass of the music vibrate a little bit, the sensory experiences began to take me back. The thumping with the darkness and the flashing lights from the machine took me back to being at a bar or club.
But I wasn’t at the club. I was in treatment.
One of the younger residents, Elly, got up to do a song. In our therapy groups, she was often disengaged and rarely used her voice. I assumed she did not want to take up space, so I remember my curiosity when I saw her awkwardly standing before us, her hand on the mic and the other on her hip. We waited for what felt like ages, and then the words came. Elly took a deep breath, closed her eyes, gripped the microphone with both hands and came to life.
I wish I could remember the song, but I don’t. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that Elly was freed beyond the walls of the treatment facility in those few moments. As she danced and performed as if she was on stage somewhere else, I elbowed Andy next to me, and I held up my hands as though I was holding up a real camera and took a snapshot of Elly.
So, what happened afterward?
After letting herself be seen, Elly started to speak up more in groups. And me? I did eventually sing, too, just not on that day. 🙂
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