Page 107 of Pretty Black

The band had done his show before, but I’d never done it solo.

So I’d called up Lennon and explained what I wanted to do. It had to be on a quick time frame before we left for Big Bear next week, and I wanted to do it before I had too much time to reconsider.

“Let me give you a rundown on how I like to do things. I’m just going to record, and we’ll have a conversation. I have some questions based on the template of what you wanted to talk about, but I’m only going to bring those up as they pertain to the conversation, because I’ve found more listeners like that format than an interview. It’s more relaxed and they get to see you better. We can basically edit anything out in post you don’t want out there. If you want it removed, just say it. I want you to feel good about this when we are done. I’ll just write down the time stamp and I have a great editor who will make it seamless. Any questions?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Ready to go?”

“Yes, let’s do it before I think about it.” I laughed, and he smiled, all reassurance.

“Good morning music fans. Today I have a special treat for you. I have Iris Black from Pretty Broken here for a chat. How are you doing today, Iris?”

“Pretty good. Better than last week.”

“No shit.” He made a phew sound. “I feel like a lot has happened in a short amount of time. Like in two weeks, we’ve basically gotten a year of gossip about you. You’re not normally so—I don’t want to say open, because I think you do engage with your fans in a really genuine way, especially with your lyrics and when you’re on stage. But your social media is pretty sanitary, if that makes sense.”

All I could do was laugh. “I know a lot of artists don’t run their social media, and I don’t. I found it pretty overwhelming early on and bad for my mental health, so my publicist takes care of it.”

“Is that pretty common in the industry?”

“I can’t really speak for other artists, but not everyone in the band is that way. I know Lowe and River do their own. I think it’s different for every person depending on what works for them. Lowe likes to interact with fans that way. He’s always doing something with Saint Sebastian.” I wiped my hands on my pants, lifting my eyes to meet Caspian’s where he sat on the sofa off to one side.

He smiled, and I relaxed.

“So then, what made you put out the statement you did about going in for mental health treatment?”

“Because I figured it would leak, and the more I interact with mental health spaces, and deal with my own preconceived notions around mental health, I’ve realized how stigmatized it is. We talk about it more than we did five years ago, but it’s still not nearly enough. I’ve found myself embarrassed to admit what’s going on, even to the people closest to me. I hid what I’ve been going through from everyone. Even when I was barely holding it together and everyone close to me knew. I dug into this denial, playing the ‘I’m fine card,’ because I felt weak or at fault for what’s going on in my head, and it makes it worse by hiding it all the time.”

“So what changed, then?” Lennon asked.

“I can’t do it anymore. I was killing myself.” My throat got tight admitting it out loud. “For a long time, I didn’t care. I didn’t care enough about myself to fix my coping methods. I did what I had to do to get through the day and it didn’t matter if I didn’t live past twenty-seven because the only thing I could process was this second. Surviving this hour. Getting through to the next whatever. I didn’t think even two days in advance. Reaching thirty was inconceivable to me and admitting that to myself gave me a lot of insight into what my brother was going through.”

“I want to ask you about what helped you see a future, but I’m going to swing back to that after we talk about your brother. It was pretty big news when your brother died. I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what that must have been like to lose someone so close to you. I think any of us would have been a wreck.” Lennon’s brows pulled, deep emotions exuding from him. You took two weeks off this massive summer festival tour and I think all of us were shocked when you went right back to the grind. Can you give us an idea of where your head was at?”

“Thank you. It was traumatic. I was a wreck, suicide is such a shock and just—a tragic ending. I think it would fuck anyone up, but I wasn’t good before it happened, and the way the loss piled on to my addiction and already poor mental health wasn’t good. If I kept down that path, I would have ended up dead as well. I thought getting out of that place and poverty was enough to break my cycle, but it wasn’t.”

“Tell me more about your childhood and the cycle you’re talking about.”

“My brother and I grew up in poverty with a lot of addiction surrounding us. We were in a huge cycle of abuse and trauma, and I didn’t know anything but escape to cope. Life was really hard on both of us, but it was even harder on him when I left. He lost his support system and his best friend. I wanted to bring him with me, but my step-father was adamantly against it so I would say to him, it’s only two more years, it’s only one more year, but now that I’m finally admitting to myself the reality of my struggle, I couldn’t have seen a year out at my worst. Me saying those things to him held no weight. If you can’t conceive of tomorrow, you can’t make plans for a year from now. I think that helped me come to better terms with his death, and my hurt, and anger, and even my guilt.”

“I’ve heard that before. Day to day isn’t conceivable. Planning for a year or ten years isn’t possible.” Lennon paused.

“It’s one of the hardest battles to fight, one with your own mind and you get so lost in it, it’s impossible to see through it or outside of it.”

“Understandable, and I can sit here and say it’s understandable, but I really don’t know what that’s like and I wouldn’t be able to conceptualize it into my own experience to talk to someone else about it.” Lennon nodded like he was working through it in his own brain.

“Exactly, and the way we’ve stigmatized it has only made it worse. People do not want to talk about it and it makes suffering through it worse.” Talking about it got easier the longer we did it and for that, I was thankful.

“Let’s come back to what helped you see a path towards a future.”

I exhaled. I’d gone over this so much in my head for the last few days, I didn’t want to fuck it up. “We are in the middle of a lawsuit with our management, and I can’t really talk about it that much, but I was really struggling through the conflict and this album we worked so hard on was caught up in the conflict. And while things were great with the band, I could coast while hiding my pain and using drugs to function, but when all the turmoil in my work life exacerbated the issues, I had no coping skills or way to function.

“My substance abuse came from a place of running from pain. Blocking out my intrusive thoughts and trauma. It was never about wanting to die, or hating myself. It was about escape. I wanted to get out of my head and not have to face the worst moments of my life. I’d never learned ways to deal with my trauma or even cope with my life. And for a long time I didn’t see how what I did to myself hurt those around me, but then—” I smiled, meeting Caspian’s eyes again. “This is going to sound cliche and maybe it is, but I fell in love with my best friend and the more I loved him, and spent time with him while all of this was going on, the more my eyes opened to how much my self destruction hurt him.

“I put him through so much, and he loved me through it all. He never judged me. He tried to take care of me the best he could. He worried about me, and things weren’t always sunshine and roses. We’ve hurt each other through this journey, but he came from such a place of love. The more I hurt him, the further I pulled back, and then I was at war with myself. I didn’t want to lose him, and I realized I was going to have to make a choice. I couldn’t be this ticking time bomb in his life. Not if I loved him. It wasn’t fair and since I knew neither of us could ever leave the other, I was going to have to do the work and face my trauma and pain to be better for him.

“So he didn’t fix me. He didn’t magically make me better by loving me. It doesn’t work that way, but through loving him, I realized I didn’t want to join the twenty-seven club, which is definitely where I was heading. I want to build a future with him. I don’t want to be the reason his life is ruined and I think the more I process and deal with the death of my brother, the more I see every day how much I could let his death ruin my life, and use it as an excuse to sink further into my hole. But I don’t want to ruin Caspian’s life and I don’t want to put those things on my brother. I would much rather turn the tragedy of his death into a positive. I’m forever changed having known him, and there isn’t a day I won’t miss him, but I also want the experience of loving him to make me a better person, not a worse person. I want my boyfriend loving me through my worst to make me a better person and partner. I want to lead with love. I want to help other people like me.”The more I talked about it the lighter I felt and the easier it was to make sense of it. My world had always made sense in lyrics and poetry, I shouldn’t be surprised talked helped, too. Maybe part of it was letting go of it. Not keeping it so close to my chest. Cathartic. Maybe my therapist was right. She usually was. I still didn’t want my brother’s last words out there for the world, but the more I talked about him, the easier he was to share.

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