I wrote this post on February 11th 2012, and it’s been sitting in my drafts for nearly 7 & 1/2 years! I never really wanted to post it, but maybe 7 years is long enough...
I wrote this post the night I found out Whitney Houston had died!
“Rest in peace, darling Whitney
When I was about 5 years old, I saw The Bodyguard for the first time and instantly fell in love with it. I've seen many great movies through my life and have a lot of favourites, but when I'm asked what is my all-time favourite movie, I always come back to The Bodyguard. It had such a huge impact on me, mainly because of the beautiful songs and the amazing voice of Whitney Houston, who became my idol and inspiration. I fell in love with music and desperately wanted to become a singer, and Whitney was always my idol. 'I will always love you' has always been my favourite song and I know it by heart, every note, the way she sang it.
A few years ago I was standing in a bookstore reading a magazine that had an article that said that Whitney had been diagnosed with cancer, and although that has never been confirmed, not to my knowledge at least, I was terrified of it being true. I started tearing up, right there in the middle of the store. Since then I've tried staying away from reading about Whitney's struggle with drugs and alcohol because frankly, I felt my fangirl heart couldn't take it. I didn't want to ruin the healthy image I had of her in my head since I was a kid.
About 2 hours ago I was watching a video on youtube that had nothing to do with Whitney, but still youtube recommended I watch Diane Sawyer's interview with her from 2002. For some reason I thought back to the time I read the article about how Whitney had cancer and how scared I was that she was going to die. I realized just then that because of her troubled past that she actually might die, and soon. But as quickly as the thought entered my brain, it was gone again.
An hour later my eyes caught an article headline on a website that said 'Whitney Houston dead at 48'. I froze completely, and I immediately thought that it must be a hoax, because it would be too much of a coincidence, that I had just been thinking about it, so it just couldn't be true. I decided to google her, because I didn't trust the site that had the article, but when I was going to type her name, my fingers froze. I was too scared to do it. I kept telling myself that it wasn't true, that if I didn't see it, it wasn't real... but I already knew it in my heart. My idol was really gone.
I'm only writing this to get this of my chest, and also because I found a post about her on tumblr saying how people would now pretend to have been a huge fan and loved her work all their life. And that's true, there are people who do that whenever a celebrity passes away before their time. I've never actually known this feeling of having someone you admire and love so dearly die at such a young age, but I know now, and it's a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling. I really just wanted to write this down because I wanted to remember what this moment felt like, because I actually am someone who has been a huge fan of hers for as long as I can remember.
Whitney, I hope you’ve found peace now. I will pray for your darling Bobbi Kristina, and I hope that she will be allowed to mourn in peace.
I will always love you <3
