At five o’clock on the dot, my father poured vodka sodas for himself and my grandma. Running between the kitchen and back deck to check on the steaks, Tennessee-in-July humidity dripping from his brow, he absentmindedly offered me a drink.
From the couch, where I was laid out with my eyes clamped shut, I shouted, “Dad! I am SOBER! I cannot have vodka!” I forced my eyes open only to roll them, my snarl brimming with teenage angst.
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But I was not a teen. I was a 35-year-old woman, recovering from a head injury and drug and alcohol addiction (the former a result of the latter). I’d lost my house, my money, and, apparently, my mind: Like my 92-year-old gran, who had moved into my dad’s Nashville three-bedroom a few weeks before I did, I wasn’t deemed capable of living on my own.
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My actual teen years in Minneapolis were wild and doused in, well, vodka. My father’s already busy touring schedule with his band, The Rembrandts, exploded after they recorded “I’ll Be There for You,” the theme song for Friends—leaving little time for him to be there for me. When my mother moved to another state to remarry, I dropped out of school, got a fake ID, and took off for Los Angeles in hot pursuit of my own stardom. When my grandmother found out, she wrote me a disappointed letter condemning the dangerous path I was heading down. I was, she argued, much too young to be on my own.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Gran’s warnings rang in my aching head as I found myself sleeping in my dad’s second guest room—a generous description for a glorified guitar-case mausoleum. Sandwiched between the dusty cases and Friends paraphernalia, I wondered if I’d died and gone to hell.
Alcohol and drugs stunt your emotional growth, and it’s often said that when getting sober, you revert to the age you were when you first picked up your habit. And so my second adolescence began—only this time, I was actually living with my family. I had the feeling we were trapped in a multicamera sitcom—a glam-but-losing-it grandma, aging rock-star dad, crazy-broke daughter—and I prayed we wouldn’t get a second season.
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Like a typical teen, I sulked around the house in baggy clothes, complaining of lightning-strike headaches and the turmoil of simply feeling my feelings. After cutting and bleaching my hair, I realized that I looked eerily similar to my grandmother and father, both natural blondes. So, needing to individuate, I dyed it pink.
When my father wasn’t working in his recording studio, he made us three meals a day: eggs over easy, bacon; meat sandwiches; meat and potatoes. Ketchup was a vegetable. My grandmother spent her days in her room, watching Fox News and doomscrolling on Facebook. When she finally emerged at 5 p.m., her hair done up and lipstick perfectly painted, I could hear them bicker from where I hid, sobbing and scribbling violently in my journal about the miserable state of my life, the smiling faces of six unflappable Friends mocking me from a silver-framed poster on the wall.
I got a job in a pizza restaurant and tried to fit in with my coworkers, some of whom were teens, hormonal and pimple faced. I was breaking out too, as my skin detoxed after years of chemical abuse.
On Halloween, when a plastic pumpkin filled with tricks and treats sat on the host stand, I stole two little rubber glow-in-the-dark rats out of it. The floor manager reprimanded me, saying they were for children, but when she turned away, I tucked them into my pocket. They would be my pets.
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