Skin

A Story by Kelley Quinn

The Moon

In eighth grade, my mother read my journal. She found out that my boyfriend, Andres, had snuck over to our house a few days before.

March 24, 2009

Oh my god, Andres was staying at Michael’s last night, which is right down the street from my house, and they snuck over! Michael just chilled in the backyard while Andres and I snuck into mom’s car and made out in the backseat. Oh goodness, things heated up so quickly and my bra was slipping, but we restrained ourselves! Phew!

My mom picked me up from school that day and took me to the park and asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her. I thought she had found out about my cutting. It had started that summer, when I had thought my body was something underneath my skin, needing to be seeped out through slits and scars. I never felt better or more whole when I saw my blood dripping down my legs or my arms, but I convinced myself it was better than feeling nothing at all.

I was so nervous that she may had found out, but I also wanted help and I wanted a room with a beige sofa and a woman with kind eyes and a clipboard. I wanted help. I wanted someone to tell me to stop. I wanted someone to shake their head slowly, look at me, and say, “I love you. I want to help you.”

So I told her - I told her while I was shaking and broken and terrified, burning in the March sun on a park bench overlooking a tennis match: “I want to hurt myself. All the time.”

The wood splintered under me and I chipped at it with my nails, picking off pieces of it, waiting for her to say something. All she said was, “That’s not what I’m talking about” and pulled out my journal, dog-eared on the only page that she had bothered to read.

My grandma died on May 15, 2006. For years, my mother spent her depression in screams towards us. She didn’t know how to handle her grief and instead of caving in on herself, she exploded in rage: pissed at the world for taking her mother, desperate for us to understand, but instead of comprehending her anger as pain, we only fought back. My sister, Erin, and I were always so mad at her. We didn’t understand and, in our confusion, we were cruel. We talked back, spit remarks about her in the reservoir of our rooms, and fled on the weekends. She and Erin were always fighting, screaming, and breaking. Erin got loud. I got quiet.

I started spending a lot of time sitting in my closet, listening to songs that screamed; it was easier to listen to than my mother’s voice breaking. I hung up pictures and poems in that little space. I gathered blankets and pillows. I hid. I would sit in the darkness with a few candles and listen to slow music, teaching myself how to be sad instead of angry.

Once mom ran out of the rage that fueled her aggression, she grew quiet, like me. I would come home from school and try and talk to her, but it was like talking to someone who had just walked out the door: I could feel her presence, even close my eyes and imagine her lingering in the room, but she wasn’t there at all.

My other sister, Meghan, started sneaking out and running away. I didn’t blame her; I just stopped talking to her, stopped catching her, and stopped telling mom when I could hear her opening the door to leave. It didn’t matter to me anymore.

Erin spent a lot of time in her room or in the shower, letting the hot water distract her from her family, I assume. That’s what I did at least. Erin and I would stay up late, talking about how, if we had kids, how we would treat them differently: we would be there for them and we would love them stronger than our mother. How wrong we were to define our mother’s depression as an absence of love. It’s because she loves so strongly, so deeply that her own mother’s death cut her up so internally that no one could see her attempt at breathing through the wounds.

It took me years to forgive my mom for reading my journal, but I didn’t have to forgive her for the way she coped with her own mother’s death; I only had to accept it. Her father died before she got married and she walked herself down the aisle. She had no one left. I imagine my mom dying, leaving me crumpled on the floor of my future home, clutching the air, hoping to grab onto some form of her and only seeing my empty hands slide through the air.

I forgive her, but there’s no reason for forgiveness, only acceptance. I was bitter - I made up scenarios in my head to be depressed. I exaggerated my emotions, as my mother lied sleepless in her bed, heart craving for her own mother. I made my family my enemy, turning on my body because it came from them. I cursed them for this life and this anger. I curled up in my closet, looking at my skin and hating every inch, when I should have loved every part, every ounce, because my mom made me and loves me, as much as her mother loved her.

When I grew up, I realized that parents and adults and teachers and people are just that: people. If I can feel anger so strongly that I can cut my own skin open to let it slip through, then my parents are allowed to feel depression like stone columns on their backs: heavy, daunting, and impermeable.

I learned to love my mom again and to accept her, because she’s just like me. We run away, recede into the depths of our minds, and destroy whatever sanity is left over from our trauma. We grow mad slowly, while no one notices, until we explode and people wonder how we could have changed so quickly. We used to say, “I love you to the moon and back” when I was younger, but then we stopped for years.

Until one year.

The summer of 2010, I went to this Christian camp for three weeks where I was constantly starved, hazed during the night, and tested mentally until I was exhausted and shattered. I thought I wasn’t going to make it out the same, but then I got the letter.

Hi sweetheart,

I’m about to get lunch with Cathy, but I figured I would write you a quick note before I go! When I got your last letter, I hugged it tight and I’ll hug this one too for extra strength. I know it’s tough, but you’re strong! I hope everything’s going better over there. I was just thinking how different you may have been if you were born first instead of last. From the moment I found out I was pregnant with you, I knew you would be extra special. I knew I would love you, but I never could have guessed how much my love could grow as a mother. I love you to the moon and back. And back again, just for luck!

Xoxo,

Mom

At camp, we had to exchange our most prized possession with someone else in our group and I picked that letter. We then had to explain to the group why we picked our item and I tried to read it, but I couldn’t: I was overcome by her love and it broke me. I knew I could never explain to her how much she meant to me in that moment. When I felt destroyed and empty, she filled me with unconditional love, even through all those years that I had convinced myself to hate her.

We said it all the time after that: I love you to the moon and back, to make up for all those missed years. We were a family again. Erin started smiling and mom was even laughing. Soon, my mom wasn’t just a mother, but also a friend. I found myself telling her details about my friends, my boyfriends, the gossip and the breakups, the classes I skipped and the midnight drives I took because I needed space. She always understood. There were the parties I called her from, crying, drunk, asking if she could pick me up.

When I started dating Caleb, the quiet stoner kid from my math class, she never raised an eyebrow. She never questioned our relationship until she found out about my sneaking out. She found the backdoor unlocked, my bed empty, and assumed the worst. I was with Caleb until about four am and mom said she had been out looking for me since midnight. When I walked in that door, I didn’t see a friend: I saw a broken mother who had lost her child.

For my graduation present, I didn’t expect much except cake and maybe a little cash to get me started for my freshman year, but my mother did so much more. I had been studying Maya Angelou since fourth grade, but really became more interested in her in my junior and senior year as her poetry became more meaningful to me. “Still I Rise” became my inner mantra throughout those years as I learned how to be my own person and to not let people determine my worthiness. I came home after the ceremony and opened a few presents until only one was left: a stiff, squarely wrapped present. I took the paper off and beneath it: “Still I Rise” framed in a beautiful tarnished border and these words written in the white space:

Your mother wishes you well. As do I! �" Maya Angelou.

I was speechless as I looked at the authentic handwriting of my writing role model. I still have no idea how she managed to get this inspirational woman’s autograph and just for me, simple little me.

That summer, my mother surprised us all: she let Erin get a tattoo. My timid mother let my sister get something more permanent than an ear piercing. In the fall of my freshman year, I told my mother I wanted to get a tattoo as well, but she just laughed, told me I could get a tattoo when I graduated from college. When I came home for Christmas break, mom, Erin, and I were all in the car headed to see my other sister, Meghan. I brought up the tattoo again, but she quickly brushed it off. I kept pushing until she asked me what I wanted, but only asked in order to convince me against it.

I was ready to tell her: I want a moon. For you. But my throat stopped working and my eyes started watering.

She asked again, “What? What is it?”

I opened my mouth, smiled, tried to clear my throat, and said, “I want �"” but my voice cracked and a tear slid down my cheek and I smiled again, trying to be okay.

Erin stepped in, “She wants a moon, on her ankle.”

Mom didn’t understand at first and I burst into tears, because I could only think of that letter where she just loved me so much and I wanted to tell her right there in the car: I love you and I never want you to leave me.

She nodded, finally understanding, and held out her hand for mine.

Sugar

The first time I saw the ocean I was with my grandma in New Bern, North Carolina. I was six. Grandma, Mom, and Erin would always walk miles up and down the shore looking for seashells buried beneath the sand or laying softly on top whispering pick me. I preferred sand castles to seashells, so I spent my afternoons building cities and coliseums, waiting for my family to find me again.

Mom looks just like Grandma and sometimes I wonder if one day I will too. Erin and I used to make fun of Grandma because she used so much hairspray in her hair that she could have had a wig made out of stone and we wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. She always smelled like baby powder, wore her pearls beneath her collarbones, and would make comments like oh my and oh dear.

Whenever we visited her house, we were allowed to have Klondike bars at any time of the day, but we were never allowed to eat them in the living room. If we ever ventured too far into the living room she would scold, lightly: Now, Sugar…

I spent years mastering the ability to keep my feet in the kitchen, but my body in the living room to watch the TV.

I remember her backyard was full of acorns. I made a little village out of them by her garden and the king of the acorns had this huge acorn hat and was in control of the village. I asked Grandma if I could keep him and she said, Of course, Sugar. You’re very creative.

Every Thanksgiving, she would come stay with us for a few weeks. She would always stay in Meghan’s room and never made a mess. One day, as she was getting ready, I sat on the bathroom floor and asked How come you always call me sugar? She smiled and said, Because you’re so sweet!

In April 2006, we took Grandma to this beautiful beach house in North Carolina. It was right on the water and the sand was so white it looked like salt left behind from the ocean. I was eleven and got my own room with my own TV. I watched The Parent Trap every single night while my mom, Meghan, and Erin played Rummy with Grandma every single night.

I didn’t know she was dying. I didn’t know the cancer was spreading. I didn’t know the arch of her back was from pain and disease, like the air was too heavy and she was collapsing beneath it.

She died on Meghan’s birthday. My dad woke me up early and told me to pack a bag and be in the car in five minutes. While we were in the car, I counted the white lines on the road until I couldn’t keep track of them all, but counting lines is not the same as counting the breaths someone has until they’re gone. Mom was already in North Carolina. I’m not sure when she left or how she managed the drive alone. I know I wouldn’t have been able to, but my mother is stronger than I could ever hope to be.

They taped her fingers together. Her hair was no longer made of stone. Her skin was no longer soft. I looked at that body, not recognizing it because that body is not my grandmother. That body does not love or laugh or call me sugar. That is not Grandma. She is gone.

In October 2014, I visited Erin at school and we talked about mom and Grandma. We talked about how awful we were to mom after Grandma died, so we called her and apologized. We were too young to understand that death does not only kill the dying. We understand now.

We wanted something permanent because Grandma wasn’t. Even now, I feel the memories of Grandma dripping out of me, leaving the words she said scattered on the air I walk through and on the skin of strangers I slide by in crowds. I’m worried I’ll forget everything about her because the memory of her is so fragile, attached to wisps in my mind that bend and crack over time.

The word Sugar reads from behind my left ear now. While her words may dwindle with time, this one will remain as solid and as alive as I am. The needle felt like a drill digging into and through my skull and the noise felt like a vibration was coming from within my own head. I nearly cried and I wanted it to end the moment it began.

It hurt almost as badly as watching my mother, silent, staring at the body of her mother. Almost.

i am

I do not believe in God; I believe in hot showers in the dark.

In September, I broke up with my boyfriend of a year to find myself. In a month, I had had sex with 5 men: one with whom I was unwilling and none with whom I was sober. I found men in bars, in classrooms, or online, but never once did I find myself. I hadn’t been single since I was 13 and I thought it was time to really start my life and to begin to love myself first before loving another. I thought that I could do it and I thought that I had the strength to be my own person. I never knew it would be so terrifying to learn to love myself and to find myself again, to drag myself out of this dark cave I had put myself in.

In the same week, I failed two tests, lost all of my friends, and found out I had mono. I have an obsession with strength and love feeling strong, mentally and physically. I obsess about exercising, especially running. I imagine running all the time and crave for it. When I found out I had mono, I kept running and I kept going to the gym until one day, I woke up and I couldn’t open my eyes. My headache was so loud; I could only hear the blood in my head. I thought I had gone deaf. My arms were filled with bees and cement. I sat in my room in complete darkness with a pillow over my eyes and it was still too bright, too loud, too painful to sleep. I found my phone somehow and texted or called or screamed for my mom and she showed up a few hours later with medicine and a soothing voice.

But I wasn’t fixed. I took a statistics test the next day and got a 36 on it. I laughed about it. I drank that night, as the lymph nodes in my neck grew larger with the disease flooding my body. I refused to accept my weakness, so I kept running and I kept drinking, forcing the disease to ingrain itself into me. The medicine took a toll on my mind and made me think I would be sick forever. Every day was awful. I couldn’t stand the thought of being weak.

My ex-boyfriend hated me almost as much as I hated myself. I was losing control. I stopped going to my classes, blamed it on the mono, and made excuses when people asked to see me. My skin never felt like mine.

I decided to move in with my friend Maddy, because my roommates at the time were loud, dirty, and obnoxious. I couldn’t stand it anymore. They were my friends, but I felt like a stranger all the time. This was not my house. Because I was moving out, they held a grudge against me and started some rumor that I didn’t like our friend Nick. Nick texted me and told me If you’re too good enough for me, stop pretending we’re friends.

I didn’t think much about it until all my other friends joined in telling me I was irresponsible, immature, rude, lonely, boring, depressing, lazy, hated.

November 16, 2014

I went driving at midnight and didn’t come back until two. I was just screaming at the darkness and the white lines and myself. I’m so sick and angry and I started biting myself again. My friends hate me and I hate me. But I got that text: Hey we don’t want to be friends with you anymore. It’s not even that big of a deal, I know it’s not, but I feel weak. I am weak. I feel broken. I am broken. I am alone.

I used to care about myself until I started tearing at my skin again. I thought maybe if I ripped all my skin off, someone else would grow in my place, but I was wrong. I grew back over and over again and the bruises on my skin reminded me of mold.

December 1, 2014

I’m broken and I can’t stop

I was invited to a date night for a fraternity, which seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I was seeing this guy. He told me it was fine as long as I didn’t hook up with my date. I thought I could handle myself. I always knew you shouldn’t drink when you’re previously upset, but, again, I thought I could handle myself. Nick and the others hadn’t stopped hate texting me all week, for some reason, and I sat on Maddy’s apartment floor, making my Christmas sweater for the date night. I didn’t want her to see how much their words got to me, but they pissed me off.

Their words swirled in my head, repeating, tripping over each other. Instead of attacking them back, I just drank. I went to the date night. I took shots, I played games, I saw some friends, and I went downtown. It was like one of those movie scenes: the sober girl is lost in a crowd of people she doesn’t know and it zooms in on her face as the entire bar starts circling around her and she stares around her and realizes she doesn’t belong here at all.

Except I was drunk.

The bar spun, but I felt so drunk that these sober thoughts kept reaching in and grabbing me, stabbing at the exposed doubts that opened up like ripped stitches. They were blown out of proportion in my drunk mind and I just kept thinking what am I doing here. Why am I here. Who are these people.

I made out with my date against a brick wall and someone told the guy I was seeing. I staggered outside, feeling as if I was walking on the sky or sideways or maybe both. I found the guy I was seeing, told him how awful he was, projecting my internal monologue onto him, and then I slapped him. I don’t know why. My skin wasn’t mine.

I walked home, drunk, and tried to drown myself in my shower. I felt something actually break inside me. I’m not exactly sure what broke, but something cracked and spilled and released every thing I have ever felt that was black and dirty. Every feeling of anger and pain and abandonment and regret flooded my veins and my mind and made me feel swollen and empty at the same time. I’m not sure how I made it home. I just remember my legs didn’t really exist and I was floating for a really long time and then my key was in my door and I think someone walked me home, but I can’t really remember.

I took a hot shower and I think I had been crying all night but just then realized it. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I took a shower in the darkness.

I sat down in the hot water and screamed at myself until the sound was no longer mine, no longer human. I couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of my lips, I was out of control, but I kept saying it:

I am worthless

I said those words until I knew nothing else. I had no idea where I was or who I was. I only knew that I was worthless. I ingrained it into my own being. I wanted my bloated body to deflate until it matched the ground I lied on. I wanted to be nothing and no one. I wanted to die. I wanted to drown. I wanted to be free.

I somehow found my way out of the shower and into my bed. I closed my eyes, but not my lips, and hoped I would never wake up.

I fell asleep in anger and in pain and when I woke up, I was confused. I couldn’t figure out why I was still alive. I had forgotten my life and my worries in the night and this morning, I only tasted death in my mouth. I crawled to the bathroom and threw up every rotten part of me: the worthlessness that lined my intestines fell into the toilet and I felt relieved. I felt a little lighter.

I got into the shower and looked at the white, porcelain walls that surrounded me and remembered the feeling of imprisonment I had felt the night before, like the walls were screaming at me too, reverberating my cries, accelerating my hatred, and amplifying the grief that grew in my stomach like a fungus. I realized some suicides are internal and some hearts may still breathe, but it’s through desperation, not desire.

In the shower, facing my soul spread on the walls that had seen such destruction the night before, I realized I wanted to be okay. I wanted to breathe and feel my heartbeat as adding up to life instead of counting down.

I ate lunch with myself. I breathed. People stared at me, alone at a table, reading A Million Little Pieces. It’s a book about this guy who has a drug problem and he’s learning how to choose life and save himself instead of dying slowly through drugs. I thought, if this guy can survive after being addicted to drugs his whole life, I could survive my one night of destruction. I talked to myself. I breathed. I got my nails done and talked to the people around me, quietly and sweetly. I breathed. I opened the doors to the tattoo parlor and with purple dipped fingers I carefully wrote the two words I wanted:

i am

and pointed underneath my heart.

The “i” is lowercase because the “i” is just as important as the “am.”

Sometimes, people break without cause. Sometimes, a dam breaks because the pressure of the water overtime breaks it down and it cracks. But other times, physics cannot explain when events don’t go as planned, because, like all other things in the universe, humans also have a margin of error. We break, too. We rupture. We explode into a million little pieces or sometimes, just two. I’m not sure which one is harder to put back together because even those two pieces have a thousand cracks yet to break open.

I broke, too. My reasons do not add up to a dam breaking from the pressure of an oncoming current nor do they add up to a volcano erupting after boiling for thousands of years. I broke without a direct cause. I broke because somewhere, at some time, an error occurred in my humanity, and I had to take a moment to rebuild myself. I don’t regret starting over.

Now I count my heartbeats, hoping I never lose count and hoping they never stop because I am worthy. I am alive. I am so many other qualities, ideas, and emotions that follow “I am….”

I never thought that I would have to decide between living and dying, but I made that choice. I choose life. I choose heartbeats.

I have three tattoos: each for the most important women in my life: my mom, my grandma, and me.

© 2020 Kelley Quinn

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Cody Austin

My jaw spent most of it's time on the keyboard. This cut so deep, I had chills, you have an extreme gift of perception and understanding everything around you. If you're not published already I'd be surprised. Put me on the list for pre-release sales. This is insanely amazing. More people need to read this. Like Hundreds of thousands of people.