Non-fiction by Kristin Ryan
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Like a Mother Would
“Trauma and abuse and grief and the things we endure as human beings are not politely conveniently scheduled for us. We don’t get to pick an intermission from the events of our life.” -- Amanda Palmer, part of The Dresden Dolls, and best-selling author I’ve had a painful lump in my throat for months. Allyson, my EMDR therapist, says my throat chakra is blocked. My psychiatrist says it’s the mood stabilizers and the anti-psychotics, that without them I’d be crying all the time. The gastroenterologist does an upper GI scope and the tests come back inconclusive. No one knows what is wrong with me. I think it’s my body trying to keep words in. * I stand with one of my best friends in a crowded line at Grimey’s, a record store in downtown Nashville around noon waiting to see Amanda Palmer, lead singer of The Dresden Dolls and best-selling author, who is touring her new solo record. I’m so nervous I feel like I might throw up. I force myself to breathe. The woman in front of me who smells like cigarette smoke asks me how long I’ve been a fan. Fourteen years, I say quietly. She looks down at the watercolor booklet I’d handsewn that contain a series of letters for the singer and smirks. Embarrassed, I quickly cover it with my notebook. Don’t like, drool all over her, the woman mocks. I try to say that it’s not like that, but my voice dies in my throat. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2005. I’m a sophomore in high school. A sort of friend passes me a copied CD in a white paper envelope with THE DRESDEN DOLLS sharpied on the front. “You’ll love them,” he said, before heading to the next class. I flip the CD over, and study the track listing. On the way home I eat a green apple, the first thing I’ve consumed that day. I unlock the door, and throw the core into the trash. I yank open the fridge, search for a can of Diet Coke, pop it open, and chug the contents. I only have so much time before my mom and little brother come home. I tie my hair up and take off my shirt in the bathroom before resting my bruised kneecaps in front of the toilet. I lift the lid, already feeling the rise of acid on the back on my throat. I watch through tears as a mix of apple, blood, and soda fill the bowl. Once over, I clean up the mess, put my shirt back on, brush my teeth, and smile as the endorphins rush through me. In my room, dizzy, I change out my Silverchair CD for The Dresden Dolls and put on headphones. I curl up on my bed and listen as worries about what I’m going to eat and when I will be able to purge are silenced. * I listen to the woman who smells like cigarette smoke talk about how she is only there because her boyfriend said she could get drunk afterwards. She says she isn’t going to the show that night, and I try my best to ignore her. My phone vibrates in my purse. On the drive down from Kentucky I had tweeted, Getting nervous to meet @amandapalmer. What if she thinks I’m stupid? I take out my phone and see a notification from Amanda, i genuinely don’t think anyone is stupid. I smile to myself and slip my phone back into my purse as a side door opens. I watch as Amanda walks onto the small, raised platform and puts her phone in her back pocket. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2009. The snow is falling hard as I use the handrail to pull myself up the three flights of stairs to my undergraduate poetry workshop. It’s early morning, and I discreetly tossed a zip locked gallon size bag of vomit hidden inside a dark plastic grocery bag into a trash can outside the building. I need to rest on the second landing, heart beating wildly in my tight chest. I reach into my bag, pull out a bottle of Mylanta, and chug. After putting it back in my bag I turn up the volume on my iPod. I’ve lost count of how many plastic bags, how many bottles of diet pills, how many times I’ve wondered if this year would be the year the disorder finally kills me. * Amanda looks tired, and her voice is raspy, almost extinguished. She opens with a song on her ukulele. Once it is over, a discussion about the importance of abortion rights as bans are happening across the country emerges. She opens the discussion to the crowd of less than a hundred. It feels like a town hall meeting. Several people share their own abortion stories, or thank the singer for helping them through a trauma. Amanda closes the discussion with a song, everyone singing the last few lines as she weaves through the crowd. When it’s my turn to meet Amanda, her face crumples as she takes the booklet and reads, Dear Amanda, you have been my longest friend on the outside cover. As she pulls me into a hug, I whisper my first secret in her ear: I was going to kill myself in December. Even though she is late for sound check and said she couldn’t really stop to sign more than one thing, she takes my journal and writes, For [Redacted]. Stay strong. You are enough. Take the dark + make light. Upon handing it back, her thumb swiped under my dry eye. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2010. I am starving. Hypomanic. Numb. My head cracks. I come back to my body. I see blood on the bathroom floor, a slit wrist. I panic. With shaking hands, I pull out my phone and call my mother. I tell her I’m having an anxiety attack as I clean up the mess, and that I think I need to go to the hospital. She says I’m fine, that it’s all in my head, and I believe her. Once I end the call, I put your music on repeat, and try to sleep. A few weeks later, I itch as I heal, my skin knitting back together on the way to Lexington, Kentucky for The Dresden Dolls reunion tour with a guy from my Latin class. Sure, he drinks too much, but his hands touch only men. I shake after the show, my friend is hooking up with a guy in the bathroom as I’m next in line to meet you and Brian. I hold one of the daises that was thrown into the crowd. You kiss both my cheeks and as you pull me in for a hug, I whisper, your music helped save me. You lift my still pink wrist and bring it to your mouth for a kiss. I know. It’s okay, you tell me. * With a few hours to kill before the show, my best friend and I drive to a tattoo shop to pierce my nose. Outside the shop, a group of middle-aged men with sleeves of tattoos are smoking on the porch. Even though I am wearing opaque tights under my long floral dress and a cardigan, I feel exposed as I quickly walk past them. Once inside the clean yet dark shop, a woman with half her head shaved smiles as I inquire about piercing my nostril. She pulls out a selection of studs from a glass case, and I choose a stainless steel one. High on endorphins left over from the encounter at the record store, I buzz with happiness and excitement. I swing my combat boot clad feet back and forth and try to focus on what the woman is saying. She warns that I might cry as I lie down on the padded fold out table. All that escapes when I feel the pinch of the needle is a single tear. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2014. Crouched in the corner of my fiancé’s bedroom I whine, I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe as I tear at my arms with my fingernails. He restrains me as I lunge towards the bathroom to purge. I’m dirty, I’m dirty, I wail as we sink to the floor. When I come back to my body and my surroundings, he puts Neosporin on my scratches. He kisses my forehead, tells me I am loved. Exhausted, we go to sleep. The next day I’m alone in my apartment watching a YouTube video someone posted of your new song, “Bigger on the Inside”. The video is high quality, and I can see you tearing up. Inside me my chest is aching. My eyes burn as you sing. * Once we’re in the Ryman Auditorium, my best friend and I have a perfect view of the stage, where a piano is waiting to be played. Patrons hurry to their seats as the lights dim. Amanda’s husband, Neil Gaiman, comes over the intercom to give an introduction and warning to what the four-hour long singing and storytelling show will contain. I knew it was going to be hard: stories about her abortions, the death of her best friend due to cancer, the birth of her son, and facing a miscarriage alone. I’d listened to her latest solo album There Will Be No Intermission every day since its March release and thought I was prepared. I was wrong. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2015. My heart is pounding in my chest. I just completed the first semester of my MFA program in poetry. I can’t stand to be touched by my husband anymore, and after a few years of recovery, I’ve started to eat less again. My therapist of a few months refers me to the sexual assault support center in addition to seeing her. With shaking hands, I dial the number, and am connected to the intake department. * Halfway into the show, my best friend grabs my hand and holds it as Amanda sings lines about a fan reaching out to her after a sexual assault, wanting to know how she could be so strong. I thought I would finally cry, watching Amanda cry, singing the lyrics that had made my blood run cold, my stomach drop. Again, I was wrong. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2017. I am locked up on the behavioral health unit on the 7th floor. I’m in the thesis semester of my MFA program. The nurses won’t give me the poetry book I have in my bag. I’m wearing green scrubs, which they told me downstairs are for the patients at the highest risk of suicide. They took my sports bra, which I didn’t mind. They also took my underwear, which made me hysterical. They wouldn’t give them back no matter how hard I cried and pleaded. The nurses give me Risperdal, and Valium. I curl up on the narrow bed and try to drown out the trauma, namely images of [Place of Abuse] by focusing on your lyrics. Upon discharge, the psychiatrist tells me it was the perfect storm that landed me there: a trusted male friend committing sexual assault against another friend, the newly elected President, writing my thesis, and trauma therapy. * My best friend and I have after-show passes. I’m exhausted, trembling, and trying to figure out how to survive what I need to tell Amanda. The task seems impossible. I swallow past the ever-present lump in my throat, and as the crowd leaves the hall, I watch Amanda on stage blow kisses up to the few of us who gather in the balcony, a smile on her tired face. * Dear Amanda, It’s 2019. I take the pills my husband hands me. A blue and white one, an orange and white one, a tiny peach one, one and a half white ones. Earlier that day we went to the store and bought a lock box. Trained as a crisis line operator whose job it is to keep people alive, I watch as he throws out anything I can overdose on. All the knives, razors, even tweezers go in a suitcase with a double lock. All my prescribed meds go into the lock box. An emergency appointment with my therapist is scheduled in two days. At the appointment, I tell her about the setback I had with my poetry career. I also tell her I’m going to see you in May on your solo tour. She tells me I can’t kill myself if I have something to look forward to. Slowly, the days pass. I write I deserve to live over and over in my journal, even though I don’t believe it. There Will Be No Intermission is released early in March, on a day I don’t feel so well. It’s been two months since everything was locked up. I take my meds on my own. We chop vegetables with knives. I put on headphones, curl up on our bed, and begin to listen, thankful for the familiar sound of your voice. * I watch others talk with Amanda, still unsure if I can go through with talking to her. I’m having a hard time staying in my body. Amanda turns to me and smiles, her hand on my shoulder. There’s something I need to tell you, I rush out, but there are a lot of people around and I don’t want to burden you. Worry and fear gnaw at my insides. You won’t burden me, she says quietly, leading me away from the others, hair beginning to fall from its intricate up-do. I take a deep breath and whisper in her ear, my family…my family molested me. I’ve never said those words out loud. To anyone. Amanda takes me into her arms, her right hand tightens in my hair, her left arm holding me fast against her. She holds me like a mother would, and we rock slightly back and forth. She whispers, oh my God. I am so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you. We break apart after a few minutes, her blue eyes streaming, smearing her mascara under her eyes. She reaches forward with both thumbs and wipes under my leaking brown ones, smearing my own makeup. * It’s well after midnight and my best friend holds me outside the Ryman as I force gulps of air into my lungs. I shake, desperate for the tears to stop as they drip onto the fabric of her shoulder. Reality of what I just said slams into my chest and I am a child again, afraid. I apologize over and over for getting her cardigan wet, for finally unleashing the sirens in my throat. On the way home my phone vibrates. I look at my Twitter notifications. Amanda Palmer is now following you. A direct message from Amanda comes through: Keep healing. |
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Kristin Ryan is a poet working towards healing, and full sleeves of tattoos. She is a recipient of the Nancy D. Hargrove Editor’s Prize in Poetry, and her work has been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her poems have been featured in Glass, Jabberwock Review, Milk and Beans, and SWWIM Everyday among others. She holds an MFA from Ashland University and works in the mental health field. Her full length poetry collection, MORNING, WITH BANDAGES is forthcoming from Bone & Ink Press.
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