Posted: Monday, January 2, 2006 6:00 pm
Jackie Heyen, a 27-year-old songwriter who grew up in Seward, is featured on a documentary on eating disorders being used as an educational tool across the nation and around the world. Heyen used to suffer alone. Now she’s using her guitar and strong voice and her story to reach others who suffer, too. http://www.journalstar.com/media/flash_news/jackie_heyen_400x400.swf%20',%20'privacy',%20'width=400,%20height=400,%20scrollbars,%20resizable=no')"> Watch and listen to Heyen sing
BY COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star
One morning in the bathroom, she saw a skeleton staring back in the mirror. It scared her.
It reached out and slapped her.
Jackie, it said, you’re going to die if you don’t get help.
That happened a few years ago in her Nashville apartment. Looking back on that moment, Jackie Heyen still can’t explain it. Why that morning?
It could have slapped her when she was kid at Seward High eating just one Snickers bar a day, too weak to play basketball her senior year, too weak to get out of her waterbed. One day she tried to sit up in the bed but couldn’t. She rolled until she fell to the floor.
She looked in mirrors back then and saw the fat face of a girl who felt all alone.
The skeleton was there.
But it said nothing.
It could have slapped her over those next few years as she dropped out of college after college in Nashville, too weak to concentrate on class or her dream of being a professional songwriter, cutting a CD of her country-folk music someday.
She cut herself then, to relieve the pain.
It helped for a little while, but then the hurt and the guilt and the pain fell again like rain, drenching her. She popped diet pills and laxatives into the skeleton’s mouth.
But it said nothing.
It could have slapped her during the several stints at treatment centers, when her parents made her go. They were scared by what they saw. But she wasn’t ready to see the reality in the hospital mirrors.
The week before that morning in the bathroom, she hadn’t left her apartment. It was like she was hiding out. She ate hardly anything. She exercised, eight hours some days even though her muscles were wasted away.
But for some reason, looking into the mirror that morning shocked her for the first time. She saw the bony face. The two black circles staring back. She heard the warning.
This is enough, Jackie. Enough.
And it was her voice.
First verse
She told people she moved to Miami for the beaches.
But she went to be near a great treatment center. Anorexia and bulimia were killing her. It was slow suicide. She didn’t want to kill herself outright because she knew the pain it would cause other people.
In Miami, she got a great therapist. The therapist helped a lot. She got a nutritionist. She got into groups with other people with eating disorders and made friends.
One day she was watching TV. She thinks it was “Friends.” Something strange happened.
She burst out laughing.
It wasn’t because other people were laughing and she thought she should, too, to fit in. She laughed because she felt like it. It was an honest laugh.
And it felt good to hear it come out of her mouth.
She started writing songs about her struggle.
One Christmas Eve, she sat by herself in her apartment in the Florida Keys. She strummed her guitar. She started singing, and words of the chorus of a new song started pouring out.
Let it rain, let it pour
Let it fill the emptiness inside my soul …
She wrote it on a sheet of paper.
Then the first verse poured out. She wrote of her loneliness and guilt and drive to be perfect. Her self-hatred.
The song was about the skeleton.
You were always there in my life
When I was happy or sad
You were the closest to family or friend
Even though you were killing me more every day …
She named the song “Let It Rain.”
But then she got stuck. Nothing sounded right the rest of the night. She put the lyrics away.
It took her about six months to continue.
Second verse
Her body image problems began when she was 9 years old.
She remembers going with her family on vacation that year to a Texas beach. She remembers wearing a swimsuit with big, round cut-outs on each side and hating how she looked in the mirror.
About that time, her grandma killed herself.
She loved her grandma, who had worked in the school cafeteria. She’d see her every day and her grandma made her feel special.
She was a skinny kid to begin with. No one ever called her fat, except for that girl in the mirror.
She grew to 5-foot-10. She started the Snickers diet. Her basketball coaches thought she had grown lazy.
She spiraled down in Nashville.
She didn’t write any songs there, even though she was surrounded by music. She was so wrapped up in her own pain that she couldn’t see anyone else’s pain.
In Miami, she started to heal.
She started to write about the process, and for the first time saw how her music could be like therapy, too. It felt good.
But part of her still wanted to hold onto her eating disorders. They felt safe. When she controlled what she was eating, it made her feel like she was in control of her life. But it was a fake control.
One day, she took up that pen and guitar again and let those emotions come out, too.
What is life without you here?
How do I feel the void?
Am I worth life and happiness?
Or am I setting myself up for failure again?
Third verse
The song took a year to write.
When it was finished, she sang it to a friend who also had an eating disorder.
Jackie, she said, that’s amazing.
She sang it to her therapy group, then to other groups. She sang it at an eating-disorders awareness event.
One day, her therapist asked her if she’d sing it for some people who were filming a documentary on eating disorders, tell her story, too.
OK, she said.
In the documentary, she plays her guitar. She looks beautiful with no makeup. Her bones no longer stick out so much.
Her voice is strong.
…Learning to love someone you’ve only hated
Is even harder when it’s yourself
Holding myself back scared to see
A new life without you seems like a dream…
For the past year, the documentary has been getting a lot of publicity. Hospitals, treatment centers and people from around the world have ordered it. One of the filmmakers, who also has battled an eating disorder, has been on CNN.
The documentary educates people about eating disorders —anorexia, bulimia, binging. Jackie’s song is an emotional highlight.
She’s heard from people across the nation. One person from El Salvador wanted to know how to buy her CD.
There isn’t one yet. She’s trying to raise the money to make one.
Jackie is 27 now. She still battles anorexia and bulimia. But they’re under control.
“When I look in the mirror now, it depends on the day — some days I look and it’s like, ‘I’m looking all right.’ Other days it’s like, ‘Oh, what have you done to yourself? You look like a blimp.’
“But there are more good days than bad days.”
Part of her recovery, she says, was realizing that everybody hurts, not just her, and coming out of that self-centered view.
And part of it was connecting her pain with her passion, songwriting, and seeing it connect with others.
She knows the life she wants to have.
“And every time I sing about it, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can be there. I can see it. I can embrace it.’”
She keeps her hands busy. That’s one of the coping skills she’s learned. She crochets. She plays the card game Solitaire.
She strums her guitar.
She writes.
Sometimes, when she sings other people’s songs in public, she grows nervous. Her guitar becomes her shield. She feels the faces staring at her and is scared to look back.
But not when she sings her own songs. At those times, she looks up and sees tears, especially by the third verse.
…Tonight I realize my self-worth
As the rain falls down
I lift up my hands and dance in the rain
Free from your deadly voice. …
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.