Now that I can breathe again...

In June of 1995, I was a twelve year old girl getting ready to go on vacation for a month in Connecticut where most of my family lives. The day before I got on the plane with my little sister, I was given the opportunity to buy a new CD for the trip. This was a rare gift. We were very poor, and things like Cds were usually out of my grasp. I had gotten a portable CD player the previous Christmas, and it was my most prized possession, so having another CD to listen to was a source of unimaginable joy for me. We went to the PX at Ft. Knox, but I knew exactly what CD I was going to get.

The date was June 21, 1995. Michael Jackson’s double album “HIStory: Past, Present, and Future Vol. 1” had come out the day before, and it was the only thing in the world that I wanted that day.

What followed was a Summer completely and totally filled with Michael Jackson. VH1 was constantly playing concerts and videos. The premiere of the video for “Scream” was later that summer, and I remember begging to make sure we were home when it came on the television. I listened to the ridicule and jabs from my family about my love for the King of Pop, and I didn’t care. A summer tradition back then was for me and sister to make a “movie” with my cousins. We wrote scripts and had costumes. That year, the movie was called “The Michael Jackson Murders,” and in it, I was a murderous fan who killed everyone who made fun of Michael Jackson or of me for liking him. Everyone knew of my love for that man, and I celebrated him every day. I wrote my first fan fiction that summer. It was a Batman story, and in it, my original character was the entertainment at a gala thrown by Bruce Wayne. The entertainment for that night was a dance routine performed to “The Way You Make Me Feel.” I couldn’t keep the music out of the story. It kept popping up everywhere.

We went to the Cape Cod that summer, and I spent 90% of my time either watching Michael on TV or tucked away from my family in the basement of the beach house we were staying at, headphones over my ears and my nose buried in the liner notes to the album. That album meant everything to me, but it was only the middle of a lifelong love of the man and the music.

I know that some people think it’s stupid when normal people get upset about the deaths of celebrities. This wasn’t a celebrity death. This was the death of something inside of all of us. It was the death of part of my childhood, of the childhoods of so many people. It was the death of a part of this country, this world. We will never see anything like him again. I don’t want to. I want him to remain the greatest superstar this planet has ever seen. I don’t want anyone to even consider aspiring to his level of talent, celebrity, and influence. It is simply not possible, and to suggest that it is possible is an insult to his memory and legacy.

Haters to the left.

I cried. I watched hours and hours of his music videos. I spent more money that I should on downloads. I didn’t mind. I ignored the protests of family and co-workers. I needed that time to process what was happening. I still haven’t managed to really get over it, but I’m not a moron. I know that life can’t stop, and it hasn’t, but I can say that it has slowed down. Some part of what makes me who I am is gone forever, that part that one man helped cultivate when I was a younger girl who daydreamed she was the girl in the video for “The Way You Make Me Feel.”

No, I was that girl. He was singing to me. That is the way he made me feel.

I’m not sure how I’ll ever be able to listen to a song of his again without feeling a brief wash of that grief that is still so near to my heart, but in some way, I think that’s the way it should be. Ten years from now, when I hear one of his songs, I hope I get that moment of sadness. I hope I feel my chest tighten, and I hope I get goose bumps. I never want to forget the things that man and his music stirred inside me. They are some of the best parts of me, and I never want to lose that.

Goodbye, King of Pop. Thank you for what you gave me. No one will ever replace you, and I promise you will never be forgotten, at least not by me.