The Man in the Mirror

I roll my eyes as a cluster of neon clad girls buzz, "The way the sidewalk lights up as he walks is so cool! I love that song." Michael Jackson and that stupid Billie Jean video. Cool? Whatever. He's so overrated. I mean, if you wanted to talk about enduring cool, who could really compete with Men Without Hats? The girls put "Thriller" on the stereo for the three thousandth time that night, crooning and shrieking as I strap on my Walkman and coolly pop in a cassette for some band that has long since faded into obscurity. My friend's brother attempts to moonwalk by and I punch him in the arm.

I was one of only five people on the planet who didn't own a copy of Thriller, largely because I like to be contrary; it allows me to feel superior and rebel against alcoholic absolutism by being absolute in a different direction. But because I grew up in the 80's, I couldn't escape knowing every song on the album whether I owned it or not. (And then secretly singing them to myself when there was no one around to see me being anything less than contemptuous of their choices.)

When Michael Jackson's skin whitened and his nose became skeletal, when he was accused of child molestation and and sued for debt, when there were reports that he bought the Elephant Man's bones, when he nicknamed his son Blanket and built an amusement park in his back yard, when the tabloids dubbed him Wacko Jacko, I liked to tell people "I told you so. I always thought there was something wrong with him." As if that were really the reason I pretended to disdain him when he was at the height of his popularity and continued to mock him as his untreated mental illness* played out on a global stage.

But my relationship with Michael Jackson (as with so many people in and out of my life) has changed as my relationship to myself in recovery has changed. Instead of seeing him as someone to mock in order to feel clever and healthy, I started to see a someone who was aching enough inside to have visibly mutilated (or paid his plastic surgeons to mutilate) his body. I saw a talented man who lived imprisoned in his own deep pain, a man who self medicated through fantasy in many of the same ways I had myself. As I came to better understand my own love of Peter Pan and the fantasy of Disney and my own desire to escape into some fantasy childhood, I suspected I better understood his too. And I used to, in my own way, pray for him. I thought about how hard it must be for someone so insulated from the world by money and fame to finally reach a point low enough to break through denial and bring desperation for change, and I would hope that he would finally lose enough to get help.

When I learned of Michael Jackson's death, I felt the same sadness I felt at the death of my father-in-law: the grief that he died without ever finding relief, redemption or recovery (in its broadest sense) in this life. But I am grateful, as I see my own progress mirrored in my changing perceptions of him, that I can finally crank up "Thriller" and spin a bit in his honor.

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* This is a post about my recovery and how my perceptions of Michael Jackson are a benchmark by which I measure my own change. I personally believe, based on his bizarre public behavior and appearance, that he was not mentally well, healthy and happy. Others may believe that he was merely misunderstood, while still others may believe he was more unforgivably ill or evil than I believe him to have been. I'm not interested in debating or speculating about what the specific nature of Michael Jackson's ills and demons may or may not be, as I doubt that any of us are operating on . I also want to make it clear that simply because this is a post about recovery, I am not suggesting he was an addict himself.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.