Have Heart

I don't remember the day they started beating me. But the beatings have been going on for a long time. With anything they could grab. Usually it was with the 1960s buckle at the end of my father's belt. All I wanted to do was please my Mom and Pop. That seemed impossible. I couldn't miss a beat because a beatin' followed. When your parents beat on you it destroys your spirit, your worth, your will to live. How can you inflict violence on a child in order to teach him to be good?  I made excuses for them all the time. I still do. I worked harder and harder to please them. All I wanted was love. All I wanted was for them to be proud of me. I was the cutest baby boy you ever saw when I was born. Cuter than that as I grew. Adorable at five and six. I had lots of brothers and sisters. When I was small I kept losing count. They all got beatin'. They all overachieved. I joined the group of the overachievers. I watched what they did to get my father's love. He was worse than Mom. Mom was the heart of the home. The house was full of people all the time. There were lots of us and the house was small. We were poor. It was only Pop who was working. Eventually all of us got work. We were all mistreated, beaten, abused. The sores inflicted on my inside, my heart, were a thousand times worse than those on the outside. I wish my Pop stayed with beatin' me on the outside, that was demoralizing enough. I was a very shy and sensitive child. The bruises on the inside I never managed to heal. The stress of my abuse caused me to become physically ill. I ended up with a disease called vitiligo. People criticised that too. I was told that manifests itself later in life. The experts say it is from very old stress. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not only reserved for soldiers fighting in a war. Many of us live in a war zone in our own home, where peace, love and security should reside. I was constantly called ugly by my father. He didn't like my face. I was told I was always bad and everything I did was wrong. Sometimes he tried to alter my face with his fists. My Mom didn't like it but couldn't stand up to the tyrannical man that ran our house and family. When old enough I left home. I got a job that I was very successful at being the overachiever that I am. I became a perfectionist because I still strived to get my father's love and respect. Which of course never came. Most victims of child abuse want to love and protect children from abuse. My life became a whirlwind of tragedies. When I earned enough money I did what many abuse victims do, I had plastic surgery to be what my father wanted me to be. My father, every day of my life living with him called me big nose and ugly. I was the center of his ridicule privately and publicly. Thousands were spend trying to alter myself so that he would love me. Many people, my brothers and sisters, friends, even people that I worked with told me to stop. I just couldn't because I needed to hear my father say, I am sorry, I love you, your beautiful the way you are. Like an anorexic who looks in the mirror and sees nothing but fat, even when they are bone thin, I looked in the mirror and saw an ugly man with a huge nose. I could never recover from the psychological damage that was inflicted on me. How does one ever have a chance at normalcy when your spirit has been destroyed from birth? As an adult the verbal abuse continued. When I knew my father was coming to my house I would be physically ill and would even vomit. I was physically afraid of him. He was a bully and bigger than me. Like a bull dog with a thorn in his paw. People started talking bad about me. Calling me crazy. I could not meet a woman that I trusted enough to marry. Maybe they all thought I was ugly too. I had the worse opinion of my physicality. I desperately wanted to be loved for me. For who I was. I wanted a normal family life; the one that I never had. I wanted children though. I wanted to give them the one thing I never got...father love. I adopted three children. In this day and age father's can be single parents. Or so I thought. I was making enough money to afford a helper to help me look after the children. Abusées are super protective of their children. I created an environment for them that was the opposite of what I had. Yet that empty feeling inside me would not be filled. People began criticizing me for everything they thought that I was and everything they thought I did. No one understood me. People continued to abuse me where my father left off. Both my parents would excuse their abuse of me saying that I had a normal childhood. Others tried to be friends with me only because of what they could get from me. All my life I was a humble person although in my industry I was way up there with the best of them. Again, due to my overachieving to get "father approval". I loved my children more than life itself. In their later years they will attest to that themselves. I am sure of it. I had an accident in my younger years and almost lost my life. I became addicted to pharmaceutical drugs for sleep and for pain. I never stopped working. I even looked after my parents financially after they retired. The drugs affected me badly in the sense that they needed to be stronger and more potent to work. I often would overwork. I was told that for victims of abuse the abuse affects their health and instead of looking to psychological reasons for poor health they basically say there is nothing physically wrong with the person. But the truth is the abuse lives in your soul; in every cell. Everyone wanted something from me but I was empty because my father robbed me of my soul and never even attempted to repair the damage done. Others took advantage of my vulnerabilities and advised me badly in business. No one understood. No one heard my cry for help. I screamed so loud from the mountain top but there was no one to listen.  My life spiraled downward out of control. I sold my soul to the Devil without being fully aware of what happened. I realized when it was too late, that to my business partners, I was more valuable dead than alive....

.....So they killed me.

Michael Jackson
August 29, 1958
To
June 25, 2009