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Table of Contents
About the Author
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Copyright Page
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To my legacy, my children, Roc and Roe,
You are the physical embodiment of unconditional love.
To my lineage, my ancestors, all of them …
You may have come from two different worlds
that were often in struggle with each other,
yet the best of you lives on inside of me, finally, harmoniously.
And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all,
I do believe actually did the best she could.
I will love you the best I can, always.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things yet unseen.
Hebrews 11:1
PREFACE
I refuse to acknowledge time, famously so. I’ve made a lot of jokes and memes about it, but it’s a very real belief for me. I cried on my eighteenth birthday. I thought I was a failure because I didn’t have a record deal yet. That was my only goal. It was as if I was holding my breath until I could hold a physical thing, an album that had “Mariah Carey” printed on it. Once I got my deal I exhaled, and my life began. From that day on, I calculated my life through albums, creative experiences, professional accomplishments, and holidays. I live Christmas to Christmas, celebration to celebration, festive moment to festive moment, not counting my birthdays or ages. (Much to the chagrin of certain people.)
Life has made me find my own way to be in this world. Why ruin the journey by watching the clock and the ticking away of years? So much happened to me before anyone even knew my name, time seems like an inadequate way to measure or record it. Not living based on time also became a way to hold on to myself, to keep close and keep alive that inner child of mine. It’s why I gravitate toward enduring characters like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Tinker Bell. They remind me we can be timeless.
It is a waste of time to be fixated on time. Often time can be bleak, dahling, so why choose to live in it? Life is about the moments we create and remember. My memory is a sacred place, one of the few things that belong entirely to me. This memoir is a collection of the moments that matter, the moments that most accurately tell the story of who I am, according to me. It will move back and forth, up and down, moment to moment, adding up to the meaning of me now.
But then again, who’s counting?
PART I
WAYWARD CHILD
AN INTENTION
My intention was to keep her safe, but perhaps I have only succeeded in keeping her prisoner.
For many years, she’s been locked away inside of me—always alone, hidden in plain sight before masses of people. There’s significant evidence of her in my early work: often she can be found looking out of windows, dwarfed by a giant frame, barefoot, staring at an empty rope swing swaying from a lone tree against a purple dusk sky. Or else she’s two stories up in a brownstone, watching the neighborhood children dancing on the sidewalk below. She’s shown up in a school auditorium in OshKosh overalls, holding a ball on the sidelines, waiting and wanting to be chosen. Sometimes she is caught in a rare moment of joy, on a roller coaster or flying by on skates with her hands in the air. Always she lingers, though, as a dull longing just behind my eyes. She’s been scared and alone for so long, and yet through all the darkness, she’s never lost her light. She has made herself known through my songs—her yearning heard over the airwaves or seen on screens. Millions of people know of her, but have never known her.
She is little Mariah, and much of this will be her story, as she saw it.
Some of my earliest memories are of violent moments. Because of that, I have always carried a heavy blanket with which I cover up large pieces of my childhood. It has been a burden. But I can no longer stand the weight of that blanket and the silence of the little girl smothering beneath it. I am a grown woman now, with a little girl and boy of my own. I have seen, I have been scared, I have been scarred, and I have survived. I have used my songs and voice to inspire others and to emancipate my adult self. I offer this book, in large part, to finally emancipate that scared little girl inside of me. It is time to give her a voice, to let her tell her story exactly as she experienced it.
Though you cannot dispute someone’s lived experience, without a doubt, details in this book will differ from the accounts of my family, friends, and plenty of folks who think they know me. I’ve lived that conflict for far too long, and I’m weary of that too. I’ve held my hand over the mouth of that little girl in an attempt to protect others. Even “those others” who never tried to protect me. Despite my efforts to “be above it all,” I still got dragged and sued and ripped off. In the end, I only hurt her more, and it almost killed me.
This book is a testimony to the resilience of silenced little girls and boys everywhere: To insist that we believe them. To honor their experiences and
