I don't typically take much interest in celebrities or their lives. I'm not the sort to write fan mail either. However, in Jan. 2014, almost precisely a year after I was hospitalized for my own mental health issues, including EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified), I wrote a letter to Kesha.
She was being treated for an eating disorder at an inpatient program called Timberline Knolls in the Chicago area. I was uncharacteristically upset upon learning that one of my favorite musicians was struggling. More than that, I felt connected to Kesha, and was compelled to express my support for her. I wrote her a letter, looked up the address of the Timberline Knolls treatment center, and sent it. Incredibly, she wrote me back. Her reply was very casual. It was on a page that she seemed to have ripped from a coloring book, with the words written around the picture she'd colored of a kitten.
Recently we've all heard about Kesha's case against Dr. Luke, her producer, and in the last few days have been inundated with coverage of her legal loss, particularly via online news. Kesha first filed her lawsuit against Dr. Luke in Oct. 2014, at which time we started to see sleazy articles about what Kesha told her doctors regarding Dr. Luke.
The letter I received, dated Jan. 16, 2014, includes the quote:
"I just have been degraded and emotionally destroyed by someone I work with. It drove me fucking CRAZY. I wasn't even being myself. So I had to get help to reconnect to ME."
When I received this letter, I was euphoric. I felt that I may have helped bring Kesha some joy with my letter. Since I had no context for the statements she made within it about being degraded by someone with whom she worked, I didn't think extensively about it. I was purely concerned with how cool it was to have received a letter from Kesha.
The other day though as, I was browsing social media, seeing posts all over Facebook and Twitter about Kesha being denied her request for an injunction, many of which were accompanied by heartbreaking pictures of her sobbing, I thought back to the letter, which I still have photos of saved in my phone. The words that had once brought me such comfort, instead this time around, made her confession of being mistreated by someone she worked with, click soundly into place.
#FreeKesha
