NEDAW: Recovering, a_witha_teeth_a
I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again…
The words fade and give way to a synthetic drizzle of the melody, piano following along in the background. Together, they create the calm static of a dreamlike state, where all is zen. You’re floating oh-so-comfortably…
…and then, without warning, the rest of the band hits the ground running with its assault of drums, guitars and more synth. You are suddenly shattered back to chaotic reality.
“A-with a-teeth-a,” Trent Reznor sings with a venegance only he fully understands. I picture him literally biting the object of his passion and ripping it to shreds with the intensity of emotion matched in his voice.
She will not let you go
Keeps on and on
She will not let you go
Keeps on and on
This time, I’m not coming back
(she will not let you go)
-Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth
If I ever needed a song that described my emotions during the first year of my recovery, it was this one. Put simply, I was a mess. My state of mind changed rapidly from “I’ll never purge/starve/put my body through this shit again” to chaos and self-destruction. I never knew what would flip my emotions upside-down, for better or worse; sometimes it depended on the hour, the minute, the anything.
Everything felt like punishment. If I ate, I felt disgusted with any feelings of satiety I might have given myself. If I didn’t eat, I knew I wasn’t doing what I was “supposed” to be doing as a part of recovery, and therefore I felt like crap about that as well. If I had it both ways and ate/purged, the emotions doubled in their intensity each way. No matter what I did, I couldn’t win. At least with the eating disorder, I knew what I could expect. In this mess called recovery, I still felt like a prisoner to my eating disorder, only now I was attempting escape, getting caught, and paying what seemed like even more brutal consequences than what I was dealing with before.
I hated everything. I hated myself for getting into this mess in the first place, for my lack of understanding the world – and myself – without an eating disorder. I hated gritting my teeth and moving forward with recovery, because dammit, it was hard, and I felt absolutely clueless about whether I was really getting better or if I was completely fooling myself (and everyone else). What if everything I knew was a complete farce? I felt alien in a world where everything should have felt familiar, but the rules had changed, and I no longer knew the rules. Once I thought I had them re-learned, there was always that one little exception where, of course, I screwed everything up. Or so it felt.
As much of an emotional roller-coaster 2005 was for me, I had two inspirations that guided me. The most important was my husband, Patrick, who I met in October 2005. He didn’t miraculously save me from my woes, as he can attest, but he helped me help myself by making me feel worthy of being saved. Even when in doubt, that kept me going in the years that have followed.
The other inspiration was With Teeth, the Nine Inch Nails album released in May that year. The timing and theme of this album couldn’t have come at any better time for me. After a four-year absence from releasing new music and touring, Reznor finally revealed his biggest project ever: putting himself back together.
A near-fatal heroin overdose woke Reznor up; he realized he would lose himself to drug and alcohol addiction if he didn’t stop. He checked himself into rehab and endured a detox that “makes him shudder to this day.” He’s been sober since June 11, 2001.
Reznor warmed slowly to writing new music. He wasn’t sure if he had anything to say now that he was sober and questioned his future in the music industry altogether. However, a renewed clarity surfaced once the process began. Eventually the words came together and Reznor recorded With Teeth, the soundtrack to his journey of re-defining himself.
Learning that Trent Reznor, a musician whose music I had adored since the age of 13, had undergone his own process of recovery, sparked inspiration in me. It not only gave me a new appreciation for his music, but I also developed a deep sense of respect for him as a person – not just for surviving, but for speaking openly about his addictions and the journey back. It was exactly what I needed. He returned from his own private hell stronger than ever…and so could I.
I listened to With Teeth for about a year straight with little interruption from other music on my playlist. Every song resonates with some stage of recovery, from the confrontational “Don’t you fucking know what you are!” in the song You Know What You Are? to “What if everything around you isn’t quite as it seems?” in the ending track, Right Where It Belongs. In the same way that I identify with certain songs because I listened to them repeatedly when I was active in my eating disorder, this album became my recovery anthem. The title track, With Teeth, represents the turning point for when healthier days started outnumbering the disordered days. The album as a whole is not only Trent’s story of moving forward, but it became embedded into the soundtrack of my own story as I took a leap of faith and kept going myself.
How has music played a role in the course of your disorder and recovery?
posted on February 26th, 2010 at 10:51 am
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