Reply #36: I'm 49. There has never *not* been Michael Jackson in my life..

[Triana]

...when he sang "Ben" I was there - I know every song - the same pain he felt, being "strange", and "weird" and having skin problems (though not nearly as bad his his, bless his beautiful heart) - and being SO lonely as a child and adult, I felt his pain - AND his heart and his joy and his ecstasy when he sang.

Micheal was always - in a word - MAGICAL. I truly believe he was an Angel. HE didn't know that, but he was. And he IS and always will be. He was love embodied.

That we are the same age (year or so apart) has made his loss much harder. I was there all his life and he all of mine.

After he was gone I learned even more about what a precious gift we've lost and what pure love and beauty and passion and ecstasy was destroyed by our hideous, insidious, tabloid vulture-culture - and my heart shattered - and every piece of it went WITH him. It's gone. Michael has it.

What do I do now? That's what I'm trying to figure out. This is a loss whose pain won't go away quickly or soon. Michael Jackson changed my life - he sang straight into my heart, always. I never forgot that. How could I? There were no filters, no firewalls to block or disguise what he felt when he sang and danced - or what I felt. It was clear, and pure, and unmistakable.

And, I am forever changed again by his sudden death. He wasn't only ripped from my heart but it went with him over the days that followed, piece by tiny, shattered piece. It's all His now.

My inner World is forever changed by MJ - our outer World is forever changed by MJ.

It's a sad testament to a society that such an exceptional human being was SO utterly abused by a culture that likes to call itself "moral" and which pretends to value all that Michael was and did. Pretend as it may - it does not value those things: kindness, compassion, forgiveness, care for the sick and dying, the planet, and the suffering and the poor and oppressed. Heck, it didn't even RECOGNIZE those things in MJ. MJ was defined and seen not as HE was - but as our vicious, tabloid vulture-culture is.

It/we projected all of the worst of ourselves onto him and then punished him for it. How utterly CRUEL.

And now again, his message of Healing the World and Divine Union through Creativity is lost amidst the vile tabloid garbage spin machine.

We can't let this happen to Angel Michael. We can't let this happen to US.