It was a profound breakthrough for me that she listened to both of us objectively. And she believed me. She had been treating him for years, like Tony Soprano and Jennifer Melfi, except she was more mother figure than sexy scholar. She might have been the only person who had some kind of insight into his psyche and could completely conceive of the repressive and paranoid conditions he imposed on me in our marriage and home life. She was the first to recognize and name the abuse I was living under. I already knew the havoc it was wreaking on my spirit, but she identified the damage it was doing to me emotionally.
After some of our sessions she would ask Tommy to go sit and wait for me in the car, so that she and I could decompress and speak honestly. Once, during our alone time, I asked her, pleading really, “Why can’t he just let me go to the spa or to the movies, or do anything? I did nothing wrong!”
She took a pause and said, in her dry, matter-of-fact New York accent, “Sweetie, it’s not normal. Why are you acting as if you’re dealing with a normal situation? It’s not normal!”
But I had no frame of reference for normal. Our marriage had been a demolition site long before we made it to therapy.
After our eight-year relationship my life had become like a psychological thriller. It had gotten to the point where Tommy’s very presence to me was a hostile occupation. Tiptoeing around and protecting myself was my daily existence. I never thought I would be strong enough to leave Tommy. I thought I would just continue to deal with it. I prayed that he would realize how he was stifling me, and that he would do the work and things would change. Some days I really did just want to be like Peter Pan and fly the fuck away. Mostly I tried to just take whatever shit he was giving, no matter how outrageous, and just hope he would become more lenient. Being married to him really was the equivalent of having a strict father who ruled with fear and controlled everything you did. I kept hoping he would just ease up and give me space to just be, so that we would have a chance. It was our only chance.
I wrote in Butterfly what I had so hoped Tommy would be able to see, and say, to me:
Blindly I imagined
I could keep you under glass
Now I understand to hold you
I must open up my hands
And watch you rise
Spread your wings and prepare to fly
For you have become a butterfly
Oh fly abandonedly into the sun
If you should return to me
We truly were meant to be
So spread your wings and fly
Butterfly
Right away Tommy’s therapist advocated for me to have more independence. She supported the idea that I had to create some boundaries for myself and encouraged me to go places on my own. It seemed like a miracle—I’d never had an ally before. She recommended we do things in stages, something like probation. But unlike probation, the purpose was not for me to get reacclimated to society, but to moderate Tommy’s behavior, since he was so extreme. He had control over me as an artist. He had control over my personal life. He had control over everyone in my professional life. And even though I was the biggest artist on the label, he was still the most powerful person in my life, and seemingly everyone’s life. Everyone was scared to death of Tommy—the executives, the management, legal, other artists—everyone.
After ferocious negotiation with the therapist, we agreed the first step toward independence was that I would finally attend acting classes. For years I had wanted acting training. Songs are like monologues, so I knew I had good raw material and certainly a range of emotions and life experiences to draw from. But I hungered to learn some craft, to explore, develop, and discipline another passion brewing inside me. As with singing, from an early age I was obsessed with films and often memorized lines as an escape. Acting was both a dream and something I felt I needed to do. Tommy “agreed” I would have private acting lessons—unsurprisingly, again, with a coach he knew and approved. Like the therapist, this acting coach was very qualified and worked with incredible, world-class actors.
The acting coach was an ample woman who seemed to thoroughly enjoy her voluminous breasts and the fleshiness of her body. She moved with abandon. She swished around in layers of Stevie Nicks–esque flowy garments and made grand gestures with her arms, even during casual conversation. She was part earth-mother hippie, part privileged princess, part aspiring guru, and I liked her.
She taught out of her bohemian-luxe Upper West Side apartment. Like her, the space was eclectic and welcoming. It was filled with the scent of Nag Champa, which impressed me the most because it was immediately soothing, and back then, I was not easily soothed.
In our first session, she had me lie on a mat on the floor and close my eyes to do some basic deep breathing and relaxation exercises. Sitting in her chair on high, she instructed me to breathe deeply and try to relax. “Relaaaaaaaax.” (Easier said than done, lady.)
“Close your eyes. Breathe. Breathe.” I was struggling but listening and trying to follow her instruction. “Relax, Mariah. Relax your muscles; breathe and relax your body.” It was then I realized my shoulders were shoved
