After Michael Jackson died, all the usual suspects came out of the woodwork to inflame, speculate, accuse, defend, and memorialize.  Media vultures like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Gloria Allred took their well-worn places, along with ex-attorneys, autopsy specialists, and professional pundits. Hundreds of thousands of Jackson’s fans filled the internet with glowing praise and sad goodbyes.  A handful of people questioned the lofty praise being heaped upon a man based almost wholly on his entertainment value rather than the whole of his character, which was, at best disturbing.

At my neighborhood coffee shop, the young barista was crying as she wrote a Michael Jackson trivia question on the chalkboard.  She was upset that other people were not sharing her sense of loss.  “He wasn’t a child molester,” she said to me vehemently. “All those people, they just lied to get money. He was found innocent.”  I asked her how she would feel if a man in her neighborhood regularly invited pubescent boys to sleep in his bedroom — would she give the same benefit of the doubt to him?

She defended Jackson by citing his lost childhood, his purportedly abusive father, his inability to escape the chokehold of fame and its attending entourage of shady people.  My question wasn’t answered, but the implication was obvious — Michael Jackson wasn’t just a man, but an icon. A disfigured Peter Pan whose existence was warped in pain and wrapped in love.  Someone  so ethereal that he couldn’t possibly be expected to be bound by earthly rules.

I’ve known many adult survivors of childhood abuse, and even extreme poverty, who didn’t suffer the chokehold of fame, but rather the crush of invisibility.  Their lives as children, coming home to molesters and abusers, or rundown apartments with empty cupboards and absent parents, was surreal.  They watched the world as it existed outside their immediate boundaries, and couldn’t grasp the reasons for the disparity or the divide. They felt inferior, ashamed, and largely disconnected.

Most survivors entered adulthood with striking disadvantages, and far fewer resources than average, leaving them to hardscrabble their way through college or the workforce, expanding their sense of being set-apart. The gritty details of their childhoods were not memories they could casually share as others did. Instead of their feeling of  “difference” being lessened as an adult, it was heightened by the stories told by peers.  Happy tales of close families, holiday dinners, camping trips, and other fond memories can evoke a range of responses in those who were abused or neglected as children, but most often they hit a tender spot. . . an aching space left behind by the child whose prayers and wishes went unanswered, but who never stopped hoping.

Yet, unlike Michael, most survivors of childhood abuse and neglect could not build Neverland-like sanctuaries in an attempt to relive their childhoods, or to assuage the growing pains of adulthood. Some survivors, like Michael, had a difficult time being “normal” and were ostracized or labeled as freaks, adding more trauma to an already challenging life. Yet there were no walls they could hide behind — no team or staff they could call upon for protection — and most of all, there were no acceptable excuses.

Get over it, get on with it, leave the past behind, think positive, it’s not what others do to you it’s how you choose to feel about it, lift yourself up, be strong, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. . .

There are thousands of bromides spoken in the direction of everyday survivors, but there’s very little real interest or understanding shown in their lives, their struggles, or their sense of outsidedness.  The few stories told about their otherworldly existences are those that have big, splashy, feel-good endings.

Success-against-all-odds stories are popular, but in reality they are rare. Unfortunately, the pervasive messages in such stories leaves society with less understanding of lives on the periphery, not more.  And, of course, more bromides follow — if you want something bad enough it will be yours, if you try hard enough you will succeed, no one but you can stand in the way of your dreams.

The actual successes of most adult survivors tend to be much quieter, far less grand, more challenging, and many times more excruciating than the stories or the aphorisms tell.

Talent, charisma, opportunity, education, circumstances, looks, connections, resources, personality, geography — these are just a few of the factors that can effect any person’s success. Adult survivors often start at a deficit in a few different categories, and it can take years to catch up. For instance, I saw a young woman the other day, about 19, who had terrible teeth. The damage was so pervasive that it could only be attributed to years of childhood neglect.  I had a flashback to one boss of mine turning an otherwise qualified candidate away because of her mangled smile. He said, “if she can’t take care of her teeth, how can I expect her to take care of my business?”  I could only wonder about the number of social and employment opportunities this young woman would miss, and the vicious circle she might face — the inability to get a higher paying job due to her appearance, leading to not being able to afford the dental work she needs to look more presentable.

Many such circles exist, especially in poverty. The poor pay more for everything from their power deposits, to phones, to the car tires they have to put on buy here-pay here credit. A minor crisis, such as a broken arm or blown transmission, can set off a chain of events with months-long, even years-long, consequences.

I understand having sympathy for Michael Jackson –  not because he was an entertainer, but because he was a human being who was obviously troubled and in need of help he never received.  I believe his story speaks to so many things that should be more vigorously questioned than they are. Should public figures, especially when they are  minors, have the same right as non-public others to a reasonable amount of personal space — should California’s proposed “buffer zone” law be adopted nationally? Should sexual molestation cases involving children be allowed to be settled privately? How much non-material privilege should wealth be able to buy? Should parents of non-biological test-tube and surrogate babies be screened as adoptive parents are?

On a more personal level, what is to be said about parents who knowingly let their children sleep in the same room as an adult male because he was famous? What about America’s seemingly incessant hunger for sensational (and often untrue) tabloid stories?

Why is it that so many in society will extend empathy to the famous that they wouldn’t extend to others? Why do we so often scramble to make excuses or provide justification for the bad acts of celebrities when we wouldn’t do the same for our neighbors?

Michael Jackson will remain an icon, likely for decades after his death, just as Elvis Presley did. His albums are now topping the Billboard charts again, and his music and his style of dance will live on in many tributes, to be revered and copied by at least another generation.  He was, without question, an extraordinary talent.

My question is, how extraordinary are we as a society?  And if we’re not as outstanding as we know we should be — if we are not seeking to give our best thoughts, empathy, and support to every deserving human being, regardless of their wealth or fame — then shouldn’t we try a little harder?

This article is also on the Huffington Post for those who would like to comment.

Writer Maggie May Ethridge recently wrote a beautiful post about her young daughter, Lola, that swallowed my heart.  It reminded me of the almost unbearable tenderness I felt when my daughter was growing up. There were times I’d just be watching her — sleeping, tending to her toys, excited over some adventure or story — and my eyes would unexpectedly fill up.  Her joy was mine to share, and her pain was mine doubly.  (I’m convinced that those with  strong  mothering instincts feel the nicks and bruises of their child’s life more acutely sometimes than their child does).

The unbearable tenderness of loving a child does not end when we lose them. Heather Spohr recently lost her baby daughter, Madeline, and wrote an incredibly moving story about finding Maddie’s handprint on a door after her death.

Danny & Kendall Miller lost one of their twins, Oliver, in birth, and have been on an emotional and physical rollercoaster watching their son, Charlie, fight for his life.

One of my readers, Marcie, recently wrote to me about the death of her son, David, in a drunk driving incident fifteen years ago. Time has not lessened their sense of loss.

There is no experience that approaches the grief of losing children to death, but others still mourn children lost to drugs, alcohol, or other problems that found no resolution.  They hang onto hopes, even when scant, that one day the children they spent years loving will return.  It’s a hope that those who have buried children can only wish they had.

There are children being mourned who are fully alive, but unrecognizable. Children — once loved, doted upon, worried over, and nurtured — who have been lost to cults and religions, controlling partners, social climbs, and sweeping changes in character.

The instinct to protect does not end with either death or distance, but often turns into a desire to possess some heroic superpower that can somehow undo tragedy and put the shattered pieces back into order.

The pain that was once acutely felt over nicks and bruises becomes a fierce and long-armed emotion that seethes doubly over every story of child abuse and neglect — and that spontaneously cries over strollers in the mall, or the sight of a parent and child walking hand-in-hand.

The unbearable tenderness never goes away, not in death or painful separation. It pulls, it aches, it cries — and it calls for just one more day, one more moment of warm breath and perfect love.

There are no profound lessons in death or abandonment. There’s no gained wisdom, or sterling epiphanies, except what we have really known all along. Love is everything, love is life, love is precious, and never really dies.

Lola sleeps safely, her blond hair tousled, her head falling upon her arm.  Madeline lives on in the memories of thousands of people whose lives she touched.  Charlie gave his dad the gift of good vital signs on Fathers Day. David’s parents grieve differently on the anniversary of his death, but come together to laugh over warm memories.

Tonight, there are children being tucked in, children being mourned, and children who have been lost.  And there is unbearable tenderness and infinite love, everywhere.

When I was 21, my mother and I got into a rare screaming match. Rare, because I’d already spent years learning that fighting back was futile. If she wanted a pound of flesh, she’d find a way to take it, plus a little extra for good measure. If she felt slighted in any way — which she did if someone expressed their own opinion — she’d hold it in reserve, and it could be months, or even years, before she exacted her revenge. So I didn’t usually argue with MJ, except in my head. Instead, I watched her rail and scream as she crafted a parallel reality in which she was  so high above everyone else in thought and deed that no one could possibly be worthy of her love.

My mother was not close to her family and had virtually no friends. Occasionally she would meet someone she was excited about, but her enthusiasm waned the moment she found something she didn’t like, and that could be anything from a perceived criticism to a human weakness. I suspect that underneath MJ’s blustery independence, she was lonely. When the Avon lady came over on Saturday afternoons, MJ would engage her for hours, slowly testing every sample and pouring over every item in the catalog, while going on about everything from the weather to world politics.

MJ didn’t enjoy being a wife, a mother, or a friend. What she enjoyed most was being idolized. It was never enough to pay her a compliment — it had to be a compliment of the highest order. One memorable Thanksgiving, MJ had made a new potato souffle. She asked her husband how it was, and he said it was very good.

“It’s terrible, right?”
“No! It’s very good”.
“It’s watery.”
“No, it’s just right!”

She snatched the hot casserole dish off the table and threw it in the sink, and the rest of the dinner was quiet and miserable. For days afterward, MJ brooded.  In response, the family walked on eggshells around her and grew more eloquent with their compliments.  “Best roast beef ever, thank you so so so much!”  At 12, it felt ugly to me, like emotional blackmail, but I played along to keep the peace.

I had tremendous difficulties of my own at 21, none of which moved my mother. In her house, the sooner you stood on your own two feet, the better. I started working full-time at 13 to pay my own expenses, dropped out of school shortly afterward, and moved to California at 16. It was a hard, dangerous road. I gained experience and baggage, but not a lot of wisdom. I was angry and bitter, and made a lot of really bad choices.

By the time I stood up to my mother, I’d been functioning as an adult for eight years. Prior to that, there were whole chunks of my life she was never aware of, including molestations and rapes, but there was something particularly hurtful about her not knowing — or caring — what happened to me when I was on my own. She had abandoned me to the world without conscience or regret, and I was angry.  So on a summer day in August, while visiting her home, I did not want to hear about how her husband failed her, or how she hated her job, or how having children ruined her life. I wanted to scream at her, and I did. I screamed about being beaten in a Greyhound bathroom, sleeping in drug houses, and all the suicide notes I’d written. I screamed about a lot of things, and as her face grew colder and harder, my anger dissolved into desperation. She was feeling nothing that I was saying — except as a personal attack.

With narrowed eyes and a derisive smile, MJ told me that maybe now I knew a little bit of what she’d been feeling for years. “You think I had it easy raising four kids? I didn’t. You think the world owes you something? It doesn’t. Grow up.”

So I grew up.

I grew up, fucked up, and made it up as I went along. I threw together a fight-or-flight adulthood fueled by fears, desperation, and anxious adrenaline. I had no idea what I was doing — I fought without direction, and flew with no map. I lived in the moment — crisis-by-crisis, joy-by-joy, paycheck-to-paycheck, with only vague, blurred thoughts about the future.

And I made a lot of promises, most of them centered around being the opposite of what my mother was. I would not be cold, or hard, or narcissistic. I would be a loving, generous mother. I would have good friends and be loyal. I would never make a god of money or material possessions. Happiness would be important to me. I would not spend my life in misery. I would be compassionate toward others. I would never lose my heart, and I would never accept someone trying to bury it the way my mother did. I would never again take a fist in the face, or a round of belittlement as my due.

The problem with self-promises is that most of them involve other people, who are usually running with their own script, which may or may not have anything in common with yours. What is a blow to you may be a feather to them, and your idea of misery may be their idea of happiness. Your feelings about love, loyalty, or friendship may not matter to someone else. Your hard-won sense of what really matters in life may not be shared. Happiness may not always be a solo endeavor, and maybe the god of money should have been more worshiped. Maybe the heart loses itself on occasion to protect itself from hard truths that are not ready to be accepted.

I’ve been reeling lately. There have been too many sad or traumatic events in too short of a time frame. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m back in fight-or-flight mode, but I don’t want to fight anymore. So I’m flying without a map, and hoping beyond hope that I’ll meet with some understanding, some relief, and maybe even some good along the way.

I’m trying to mother myself, but I’m doing a terrible job. Instead of nurturing, I’m belittling. I’m berating. I’m taking things hard and way too personally. I’m recounting every failure and loss I’ve ever had, and staring back at myself with cold, hard eyes.

The friends who’ve stuck around as my body & spirit broke are telling me that it will be okay, it will be alright, and although I know there’s nothing else they can do, and they mean to be kind, I feel like raging and throwing a casserole dish in the sink.  And then I feel guilty because really, I don’t want to be anything like my mother. I don’t want my friends to have  to walk on eggshells, and I don’t want them to feel any part of the never enough that I am feeling.

I need to grow up again. I’m just not sure how, and I’m afraid — in fact I’m convinced –  that I’m going to do it all wrong.

Dear Neil,

I read your post last night and wanted to say — I know. Not exactly what you know, of course, and not in the same way, but I know.

Millions and millions of words have passed through my mind and flown from my fingertips. They’ve turned in my heart, and come pouring out in language that’s passionate, spontaneous, difficult, joyous, measured, bumbling, angry, curious, loving. . .but somehow never sufficient. I would trade them all for one perfect symphony, or even a well-strummed guitar, but I wouldn’t play for a crowd. Instead, I’d surround myself only with friends and people who understood how much heart goes into every note.

It’s painful and less poetic to admit, but sometimes I’d even trade all my words and my love of music just to be beautiful. To be that woman that makes hearts pound and doors open merely by the act of existing. Arm-candy is surely an easy gig, but one, for better or worse, I’ll never know. Instead, I have a mind full of passion, stories, desires, trepidations, and thoughts.

Language has an energy but as you implied, it’s the unexpected and often wordless sensation that drives the need to decipher, illustrate and tell the story.

I see us all as reservoirs in a way. We fill ourselves up with experiences, thoughts, and feelings and we have a choice to keep them in or let them flow out into the world. More intimately, we make choices as to whom we let fill us and whom we pour ourselves out for.

When our decisions are good, we are rewarded with meaningful friendships and loyalty. When they are bad, the consequences can range from temporary hurt to long-term devastation.

I watch the world from my corner of the world, and feel extraordinarily amazed, and often overwhelmed, by my level of amazement.  A father on PCP chews his son’s eyes out in Bakersfield, while another man lowers himself into a steaming boiler to rescue two co-workers. Incongruency abounds.

There are people who lie and know they’re lying, and people who lie mostly to themselves. People who accept the basest or least amount of love offered because they don’t believe they could get or deserve better. People who stay quiet and hidden out of fear, and people who speak loudly for all the wrong reasons. There are people who seek to cause pain, those who seek to be inflicted, and those who will run from it — even when it’s necessary.

Never mind the obviously shallow, narcissistic, or purposely deceptive people in our midst — it’s the everyday people whose energies we most feel. Those we know, love, feel something for — those whose words we read, or listen to, and whose lives touch ours, even though we are separated by thousands of miles.

“It’s only words, and words are all I have…”. It would seem that even the lyricists know that language is a pale sister to the beauty of music. . .or the skin-mind-heart sensations at the root of both songs and stories.

I know — our “bespectacled English grammar” often wants nothing more than to throw off its trench coat and dance naked and wildly on a bar to some driving beat of a song that practically the whole world knows the lyrics to — or can at least dance to if they don’t.

As writers, it would be lovely to hear, just once, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it,” or “we made love all night (or fucked with abandon) to your latest piece”.  It would make the sensations we feel more tangibly shared — it would make us musicians of the written word.

(Never mind. Really.)

Jane

I woke in the morning, and there was a sheet of ice covering the whole world.

It was drifting into infinity, frozen,
stuck in place.

I stood in front of this icy barrier, transfixed,
spiraling into a space that left me cold and shaken.

In the freeze, all the impossible things echoed back at me –
not yours, never enough, never will be.

And everything that was ever lost, that fell apart,
that never fell into place,

came sliding down
until I felt myself crashing, breaking —

There were tears I would have wept had I felt warmer
& things I would have screamed had I felt less weak,

but there was a vice on my neck & my voice was damaged.

When Alice in Wonderland meets Go Ask Alice,
curious wonder turns into a mean obsession

& love, in all of its fantastical, tangible proportions
turns upon itself,
feeding on angry words,
pent-up leanings,
and 3 a.m. frustrations –

Innocence dies a sloppy death, alone.

And dreams, once-nurtured,
twist themselves into angry muscles

longing to shatter the chains,
to hold onto something until it breaks
beyond recognition, beyond repair.

Touch me like you mean it, I once said,
and you did

You left something so deep inside of me
that I’d have to cut myself in half to find it.

I drive a spike through my spirit at least once every season
hoping rust and ice might fall away. . .

hoping the elusive spark of something
that once left me warm & thriving
is no longer out of reach.

There’s a glass building rippling in the sun,
a sidewalk littered with cigarette butts and bus tickets,

a blue-eyed boy teetering precariously close to the curb,
and a distracted mother staring off into the distance.

There’s an old woman standing at the bus stop,
clutching a brightly flowered handbag to her chest.
I smile at her and she glares –
what the fuck are you looking at, bitch?

There’s a sense of crashing, a feeling of emptiness,
and a guitar player on the corner of 8th & Marquette.

His strings are broken,
his case is filled with change and a one dollar bill.
He gives me a toothless smile
& I fight the impulse to give him everything I have left,

until there’s no choice but to run barefoot

through the pine needles, past the iron gate,
up the cobblestone driveway,
and into the arms of danger,
which is the only place I’ve ever felt loved

(even if only the danger was real).

There’s a waiter outside of Garage Joe’s
pacing and smoking a cigarette.
He looks undone before lunch,
like he wants to start running
until the clatter of plates is far behind him.

I understand.

There are months I’d like to forget,
& moments I’d like to reclaim,
but the thought of your teeth on my neck still makes me gasp

& there was a time I lived for that,
even while everything around me withered & died

In the gray pale of June,
there are clenched fists and closed mouths

and I don’t want you back,

but there’s rain in the sky &
an empty space in my heart
and it’s more than loneliness.

There’s a crumbling church with a tilted cross,
a boy with a blue Mohawk smiling into the sun

I wave at him to shed the anger
that has stolen my morning.
There’s an enormous sense of gratitude when he waves back.

(If I save you, I am somehow rescued
If I love you, somehow I feel loved –
but absolutely ruined for anything or anyone else).

There’s a need of something,
but I’m not sure what it is.
I want to crash through walls until I’m naked and raw,
and there are no memories of you left on my skin.

(I don’t want you back,
I want you faded, gone).

There are two men sitting on a blanket in Calhoun Park,
One is arguing, the other rocks with his head between his knees.
I walk past them as if I’m invisible.

There are days I wonder how much I have left
and how much of me there is really left to lose.

(And there are days I just want you
to bury me a little deeper, love, because I’m not gone enough).

The bookstore women are walking back from the coffee shop.
They look unhappy despite their rainbow welcome sign.
I want to tell them to lock the door, pull the blinds, and make love
until they understand every word ever poured out
by the broken-backed, strong-hearted women
whose passions line their shelves.

There are days I want to matter to someone like that. . .
when I want some proximal type of love

& there are days I just want to fall into your abyss,
and let myself be swallowed whole.

There’s a woman laughing on the corner,
her dark hair falls into your eyes

(I wanted to erase your scars once,
even if it meant erasing myself).

There’s a girl with a lip ring bent over a sketchbook,
her tiny arms are covered in tattoos.
She is drawing a purple mountain and a golden moon.

(I don’t love you).

There’s a chilled wind that sweeps through the trees
and a terrible longing that courses through my veins
and never enough, never enough
is burned into my marrow.

There’s a life that doesn’t feel like mine,

it’s teetering precariously close to the edge, distracted,
& edged in an anger that doesn’t belong to me.

There are feet that want to run,
and broken things that need tending.

There’s a big yellow sun, other arms,
& a shadow to step out of –

there’s a sense of gratitude, and a feeling of dread. . .

and there’s something on the horizon,

but it’s not here yet.

~ ~ ~