How do I explain how I feel at this precise moment, this One Moment In Time? How do I explain to you, my beloved reader, what I see when I watch the news reports at this very moment? How can I make it make sense to anyone but me that while you see reporters talking about her death, I see a fun-house mirror reflection of myself as a scared, lonely gay teenager? While you see clips of her hit music videos, can you understand that I see a scared, lonely gay teenager whose primary refuge from the fear of being unloved was in the pop music of my youth?
How do I hold on to these now-cherished moments of adolescent nostalgia when they keep getting gut-punched by the reality of mortality? How do I put into words the emotional connection that, to this day, I feel when I hear these trite pop songs from the 1980s? Will you even let me try to explain it to you, or will you just dismiss me as a drama queen who always gets So Emotional? Will you make fun of me? Will you even take a second to try understanding why this music still speaks so powerfully to the scared young gay kid I still am inside?
The truth is that beyond what I have just written above, there really are no words to explain it. If you don't understand how I feel right now then there is nothing I can write that will make it clear. Let us leave it be.
Let her music speak for itself.
Let the dream that gay kid had, of being loved, live on inside the adult he has become.
RIP Whitney: the all-star choir of Heaven grows, yet again.
May of 1987: within the span of one week, I turned 16 years old, I got my driver's license, I got my first car, and Whitney Houston released this song.
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