Anything is Possible With Rihanna On the Radio

  It was sometime in middle school that Rihanna graced my ears with her presence. This was when I still listened to music on the radio, maybe even before I got my first Ipod, so all I knew was whatever was in the top 100. She was sensational, an absolute icon for a good girl like myself and all my friends who so desperately wanted to go bad. Middle school dances came alive with Don’t Stop the Music and Umbrella. This was the time in our lives when everything seemed so pure, exciting, promising even. I was not yet suffering from mental illness, only ADHD which was dulled by Adderall. This was a time when I felt connection in ways I’ve struggled to find as an adult living with BPD, Bipolar disorder, and drug addiction. Pop music was the fabric of my youth and being able to sing along to every word gave me and my friends hope. Maybe, if we kept listening for long enough, we’d grow into people who understood the sexual innuendos delivered by a pop star, we’d know the heartache described in the slower songs, we’d know which drugs would make us feel the way we felt then once we reached a point where music wasn’t hitting the way we needed it to.

When Rihanna hit us with Good Girl Gone Bad, I was feeling a depressing disconnect from my sister. She had moved away from Colorado to go to boarding school, and I felt like she was disappearing from my life. Her room sat empty in the massive house I now shared with only my parents. I was sad and confused. It felt personal. When she came home for holidays she told stories of high school dances and moments in the dorms where she sang along to Taylor Swift, and it made me wonder why she needed to move all the way across the country to find music that allowed her to dance uninhibitedly with people I didn’t know. 

Rihanna was not our music, and it wasn’t really mine, either. It was music I listened to and danced to because I needed to feel like I was a part of something that was important, something grand, something that fulfilled my desire to share a room with all my closest friends and become something I wanted to be, but wasn’t yet. Being a middle schooler is a horrifically golden time. I was yearning to be an adult, and when my friends and I listened to music with lyrics that we could not relate to, but a beat that we could vibe to, we got to play pretend. We could take on all the aspects of adulthood that appeal to children, listening to songs our parents don’t approve of, staying up later than a kid should on a school night, having sleepovers during which we prank called all the boys we had crushes on. That is what being grown felt like to us.

The best part was not having to deal with any of the messy bullshit that Rihanna sang about in her songs. We knew nothing of love, sex, and the consequences of being able to make your own choices, and we didn’t need to. We had Rihanna to sing about that for us before we knew how to stand on our own. 

This was a pre-Instagram era. My friends and I knew nothing of performance. When SOS came on during a sleepover, we did not pull out our cameras to film each other for social media, we just sang. We did things children do when they’re pure and innocent. I’ve done a lot of Molly, and whenever I take it it’s because I want to feel the way I did back then. I want to go back to a time where we didn’t need to document what we were doing as a way of making memories because we were too caught up in the way we felt to think about how it would make us feel later. An iconic time to be alive, if you ask me. A time when I still thought these moments with my friends would last forever. I thought we’d never grow out of each other. I thought because we listened to the same music that meant we’d never have things to stop talking about. With Rihanna on the radio? Everything felt possible. 

It’s interesting that I moved towards a star with sex appeal while my sister was on a more pure and precious wave. Taylor Swift was the good girl of pop music. Her songs were unapologetically emotional, embodying a form of femininity in which love, not sex, is what will allow us to ascend to a full version of a woman. I hated Taylor Swift when she first blew up, but I think it was because I was jealous of people who found solace in her songs. Even as a child, I was incredibly jaded. I was constantly shot down by boys and that formed the way that I thought about relationships, as shallow as they may have been if a boy had given me the time of day in middle school. I did not feel lovable, so I didn’t want to become a romantic in the way that Taylor was. I wanted to be sexy. I thought leading with sex is what would lure men into my orbit. I stuffed my bra, caked my face with makeup, doused myself with cheap perfume and wore thongs. These are the things that I believed would make men want me. Taylor made an entire persona out of not being able to keep a man. I thought that was because she was too obsessed with love to notice that sex is what men really want. The disconnect between me and my sister was so clearly seen with the music that we gravitated to, and it only got worse when high school came around for me. 

Lana Del Rey released Born to Die when I was 16. This is the same age in which I started stealing my moms adderall and selling it, when I started to believe that if I couldn’t find a way to hook up with boys, I could hook them up with drugs which would bring me into their inner circle. I started having dangerous delusions that were not related to childish naivete. Interestingly enough, I stopped listening to music on the radio. I no longer knew what it felt like to know all the words to songs my old friends were listening to. That rubs me the wrong way, probably proving I’m another writer who overthinks everything. Regardless, my listening habits became very solitary. I preferred to be alone in my room, drunk, trying to cling to people who wanted nothing to do with me while simultaneously wishing everyone would stay the fuck away from me. A dark science occurs when you pour drugs onto a damaged psyche. Every word becomes an attack, every conversation that isn’t directed towards you becomes problematic, and then Lana starts singing Born to Die and you begin to think you’re really meant to be alone in this world. A frighteningly stark contrast to the shape pop music took only a couple years ago. 

The fact Facebook played a prominent role in the social behavior of high schoolers around this time is no coincidence. Facebook allowed me to stay social without actually having any social interaction. It gave me a glimpse into the lives of people I didn’t care about, but felt that I needed to know what they were up to so I could stay in the loop. The loop, as ridiculous as it is in high school, is a never ending whirlwind of watching people you once knew become someone different. I had to see all my old friends hanging out without me, and the worst part was knowing that the party already happened. Yesterday’s news gilded with the mirage of a good time had by all, but the comments on the photos you can’t relate to serve as a painful reminder you don’t know everything that happened. You had to be there. I had lost the connection that I felt so strongly when we all still believed in Rihanna. 

Youth is a slippery thing. One I’m still trying to make sense of in my mid 20’s. Music tastes change, friends come and go, some of them die without you ever getting to say goodbye. Drugs begin to complicate things in ways you did not think of when you did your first line of cocaine in the driver's seat of your moms Range Rover. Even years after high school has passed, I’m still struggling to find connections with people. My drinking and drug use caused me to become isolated from everyone I used to know, especially my sister. Our relationship ebbed and flowed throughout high school. Some days I felt she was my biggest supporter, and others I felt like she had no respect for the way that I was living. Truthfully, neither did I. Drinking cough syrup the night before you have to take the SAT isn’t exactly something you care to write home about. My college years were no help. Bad relationships, bad trips, constant UTI’s, an impending addiction to painkillers. Now who in the hell would want to get wrapped up in all that? To top it all off, I suddenly acquired a taste for god-awful music. Kreayshawn, Lil’ Debbie, music I could get high to and not feel bad about it. Getting spun, the kids call it. Spinning indeed, spiraling deeper and deeper down the drain only drug users know about. Being in a hole like that takes away things from childhood that are beneficial to hold onto. I no longer dreamed, no longer hoped for anything other than to make it through another day. I no longer sang along to music, mostly because I wasn’t conscious enough to remember any lyrics. I no longer had any friends who knew the words so they could speak them when I couldn’t. 

I got closer with my sister when I moved to Brooklyn. My sister lived in Fort Greene, I lived in Bushwick. She very quickly became my rock. I know she was very concerned about my wellbeing. I was essentially living in squalor, my addiction worse than it ever was. She became my caretaker, bringing me soup when I was sick and inviting me over to dinner when I didn’t have any money. We still fought sometimes, but it wasn’t like it once was. I was too sick to fight with anyone except myself. I had no one in my life in New York that I cared about besides her. This is when I discovered dance music. Techno opened up an entire new world for me while simultaneously pulling me deeper into isolation.

No one I knew listened to techno or house music. I didn’t go to shows with my friends and spend the night dancing until 6 in the morning. I found random men on Tinder who liked the same kind of party that I did, one where you could dance with Molly and cocaine under red lights. Pop music was now something that was frowned upon, considered to be a guilty pleasure. I wouldn’t admit to any of the randos that I met at raves that I used to love listening to Ke$ha and the best concerts I’ve been to were Taylor Swift and Britney Spears. My sister did not understand this life of staying out all night and sleeping all day, completely unable to hold down a real job because of the hours I kept. Dance music is rooted in principles of unity and connection. When you go out to the club you’re meant to share the night with a crew of like minded people who can keep the party going long after last call. I felt a strong connection to the music, but because I had grown so far away from pop music moments shared with friends, girlishly gleeful and free, I could no longer remember how important it is to share the music with people besides a faceless crowd.

Can you see where this is going yet? I think it was Daniel Tosh who said once you can tell the difference between house and trance it’s time for you to check into rehab. Hot girls spend the summer in rehab, I said in an Instagram caption when I went to a place in Massachusetts after spending a week at a psych ward in NYC. Here I was, so far removed from the social media free zone of my childhood that I felt the need to perform wellness for the unwell. Instagram is an easy way for an addict to get a quick hit of dopamine from someone double tapping your photo, and takes much less time than mushrooms do to immerse yourself in a world that isn’t your own when you’re not ready to live in the reality of your own creation. The amount of time I spent doomscrolling in rehab was a dance with the devil. It was an easy way to feel like I was a part of the same thing I needed when I first heard Rihanna, yet it brought me further away from finding the crowd that fit my needs. It is indeed tough to find a sense of comfort in lyrics once you become an adult and realize you relate to the parts of adulthood in a way that is painful instead of reassuring. Parts you didn’t have to deal with when you were young and silly. 

Even now that I’m stable and 9 months clean, I’m in a moment of my life where, just briefly, I allow myself to be blinded by performance when I scroll through Instagram. I see wild outfits and legendary parties on rooftops and feel a hint of jealousy at the lack of proximity I feel to that lifestyle. Then I snap back to reality and remember I love the life I have built for myself in my Boston apartment where I am usually doing the dishes and cleaning wearing only a tee shirt, my boyfriend barely glancing at my butt, both of us knowing it’s not there to cause a spectacle, it’s there because I’m at ease, relaxed. Performance: An act of providing entertainment to an audience. Everything I see on Instagram is just a way of other people letting me know that their lives are something worthy of being watched, but I’ll never really know whether they’re finding any sense of enjoyment in these lives they’re so intent on showing off.

In this boring moment of sobriety when I feel like all there is to adulthood is paying bills, avoiding plans with friends because I’m tired and feeling a nagging sense of ennui, and going to work day in and day out, I’m more ready than I ever have been to witness a spectacle. Then the superbowl came around, and Rihanna was set to perform. Obviously, I was more excited than I ever have been to see the goddess herself perform for the first time in years. Rumors have been circling for a while that she’s going to release a new album at some point, and I think we all thought the superbowl was when she was finally going to let us know that she was back in the music game. 

In the midst of all this jittery chatter about the return of an icon, my sister and I were at the lowest point that we ever have been. We got into a nasty fight when I was home for Christmas. She was harboring an understandable amount of resentment over the fact she was the one who had to get the call from my therapist that I just tried to drive my car off a cliff. She had played the role of a parent in my life for so long, being my emergency contact was the tip of the iceberg. She had had enough. She didn’t speak to me the entire time that I was in rehab, and I told her how hurtful that was when we were sitting in my moms hot tub in Breckenridge when we saw each other for the first time in months for the holiday. She told me how unfair it was that she had to put her entire life on hold to help me get to the psych ward, and I felt this was an audacious statement. What about my life? I questioned. I had to leave everything I knew behind and suddenly start everything over in a state that was miles away from where I knew home to be. She found this almost comical, screaming at me YOU HAD NO LIFE. ALL YOU DID WAS PARTY AND DO COCAINE. YOU HAVE NO GOALS, NO AMBITION, YOU HAD NOTHING GOING ON. Rude, to say the least. Yet she was right. It’s been about a decade of playing around with drugs and hoping I win that gamble. But I was going down a rocky road in which very few people make it out alive, if not physically than spiritually. 

I had no interest in talking to her after that. I thought it was over between us. Too much had been said to be able to look at her the same way. I was convinced it was time to bury that relationship and never look back. The pain I felt began to eat me alive, and resentment towards her was brewing. That fight was something I will never be able to forget, the nail in the coffin heavy from years and years of unsaid feelings. There is a lot to unpack there. But she’s my sister. She’s the only one who knows what it’s like to grow up in the same dysfunctional family that I did. All these thoughts I had about saying goodbye to her for good were just anger and deep hurt manifesting themselves into what would be a cruel punishment for saying things I know she did not mean. The thought of cutting her out now feels like a performance, one meant to demonstrate that I do have goals, I can accomplish something on my own. I can act out my feelings like I’m a woman empowered by anger. I recognize this now as foolish thoughts from a young woman who knows pain but does not know how to direct it in a way that is productive.

A surprise trip back to New York led to the beginning of forgiveness between my sister and I. I did not know how cathartic it would be to hear her say that she was sorry, genuinely sorry. I didn’t realize that we would still be able to laugh in between having mature conversations, proving that with her I can be an adult just as much as I can be a child willing to find joy in the silliest of things. It was just the beginning of a reconciliation, but it was enough for now. 

One week later, during quite the game between the Eagles and the Chiefs, Rihanna came on the screen with a smirk on her face. The camera panned out to reveal she was standing on a platform suspended above the field, wearing all red, a pregnant belly very much visible. She sang all of the songs that once bonded me and my friends together, songs that I never really sang with my sister. One thing she did not do was perform. There were no wild dance moves, no crazy outfit changes, no special guests besides the child she was carrying. She was just there, suspended in the air, paying homage to the singer we once knew her as, each mischievous glare demanding we not forget who the fuck she is, but also letting us know there would be no more Rihanna as we once knew her as. She has other more important things on her mind now. Some say her performance was lackluster. Even I fell victim to that thought, turning to my boyfriend after and mutely declaring, well that was a disappointment. Watching the show over again, it came to me that maybe what I was disappointed by was the realization that we’re all too old to continue putting on a show that doesn’t reflect who we are as people. I still want to be dazzled, to get lost in the spectacle. I get let down by reminders that life is not as fabulous as I once believed it would be when I was in middle school. I was disappointed that Rihanna gave us nothing more than a nod to the music we used to dance to, the music we used to rebel to, the music we came alive to. Then she sniffed her own pussy on national television and smirked. Don’t act like you forgot, she sang. It pains me that I never will. 

I remember the first time that I sang along to Rihanna with my sister. We were in a rental car in Salt Lake City driving back to the hotel from our cousin's house over another Christmas during which we ruthlessly fought with each other, even coming to physical blows. She put on Love On the Brain. I don’t want to listen to this song, I said. It’s so sad. I sang every word regardless. I get goosebumps thinking of this simple memory. Two sisters, needing nothing besides Rihanna to be entertained and become emotional.

I heard that Rihanna’s greatest hits spiked an insane amount after her halftime show. Here we all were, once again reminded of the people we once were, the ecstasy we felt without drugs when a song we all knew the words to blared through the speakers. I forgot how fucking good she is, I said to my friend while I bumped Disturbia. I forgot how much hope I once had. 

My life may not sparkle the way I sometimes wish it would, it isn’t Instagram worthy. It does not demand attention. But it is worth living. Rihanna brought me back to the way things once were, before Instagram became a competition, before things got tense between my sister and I, before I forgot what it feels like to fly higher without drugs in your system. There is indeed a scientifically proven connection that music synthesizes your mind and your body. Rihanna’s steady presence connected me to myself, and connected me to the one person I almost completely lost contact with. I lost contact with everyone I used to belt out Diamonds with, but my sister remains. Did you watch the halftime show?! I excitedly texted her the next day. Immediately she hit me back with, oh, you know I was dancing.