The American singer-songwriter and record producer Mariah has recently released a memoire and she has revealed shocking family secrets in ‘The Meaning of Mariah Carey’
In her latest book, the actress, entrepreneur, and philanthropist told some truths that nobody was ready for, from her childhood to her adult life. Below are the 10 things that left us shook from her book.
- She felt she didn’t belong
“There was a time in my early childhood when I didn’t believe I was worthy of being alive. I was too young to contemplate ending my life but just old enough to know I hadn’t begun living nor found where I belonged. Nowhere in my world did I see anyone who looked like me or reflected how I felt inside.”
- She grew up in a violent household
“Choking in tears, I did my best to calmly tell her, ‘my brother really hurt my mother, and I’m home alone. Please come help.’ … One of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, ‘If this kid makes it, it’ll be a miracle.’ And that night, I became less of a kid and more of a miracle,” she writes.
- She survived an alleged murder attempt
“He was holding a long double-barrelled shotgun in one of his hands. I’m not going to let you guys go,’ he said. ‘I’m going to chop you up and put you in the refrigerator and make you guys stay here.’ Well, after he said that, I rushed to get into the car. My mother started the engine.”
- Her sister drugged her and left her prey to her boyfriend when she was a pre-teen
“John, his gun, and I made two stops: a card game and a drive-in movie. John put his arm around me. My body went stiff. My eyes were fixed on his gun. John pushed in closer and forced a hard kiss on me. I was nauseous and scared; I felt immobilized.” But thankfully, she was saved by an elderly man “peering directly into John’s car … I committed that man’s face to memory.”
- She called living with her ex-husband a prison
“I would keep my purse filled with essentials just in case I had to make a quick escape. Captivity and control come in many forms, but the goal is always the same — to break down the captive’s will, to kill any notion of self-worth and erase the person’s memory of their own soul … But thankfully, I smuggled myself out bit by bit, through the lyrics of my songs.”
- She claims her ex threatened her with a knife
“I was sitting still, looking down at the table, when Tommy walked over and picked up the butter knife from the place setting in front of me. He pressed the flat side of it against my right cheek … Tommy held the knife there. His boys watched and didn’t say a word … That was his last show with me as the captive audience at Sing.”
- She lives “Christmas to Christmas”
“Once I got my record deal I exhaled, and my life began,” she writes. “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 … Why ruin the journey by watching the clock and the ticking away of years?”
- Christmas wasn’t a happy time growing up?
“I couldn’t fathom why every year, they just had to ruin Christmas,” she writes. “I set about creating my own little magical, merry world of Christmas … All I needed was a shower of glitter and a full church choir to back me up. My imaginary Christmas was filled with Santa Claus, reindeer, snowmen, and all the bells and trimmings a little girl’s dreams could hold.”
- Mariah knew she was a musician at 3 years old
“One day, while practicing an aria from the opera ‘Rigoletto,’ she kept stumbling on this one part. I sang it back to her, in perfect Italian. I might have been three years old. She looked at me, stunned, and at that moment I knew she saw me. I was more than a little girl to her. I was Mariah. A musician.”
- Her 2001 ‘TRL’ appearance was a ‘stunt’
“It was an innocent and silly stunt and highly unrehearsed. I was hoping Carson Daly would play off of me, riff, and involve the audience … But he didn’t play along … It seemed like a good idea at the time. Any idea was good at that time. I was like a stand-up comic who bombed a set.
Lambily, I'm on @goodreads! Be sure to add #TheMeaningOfMariahCarey to your shelves and leave a nice review – I’ll be reading! 😉📚 https://t.co/l8LaHtd9Mb
— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) October 2, 2020
Main Image: Billboard
