Jack Still Cries: How ‘Destiny’ Saved My Life

If it weren’t for The Jacksons’ "Destiny" album, who knows if I would still be alive today? This is my story…

I was 12 years old the first time I thought about killing myself. 

I didn’t fit in anywhere. I wasn’t Black enough for my cousins living in Syracuse, New York, but I also was too Black for my white classmates at school in Fayetteville, New York, a suburb I lived in during the 1990s.

My cousins were perplexed about why I spoke and carried myself a certain way. One time, we were playing basketball and I got a turnover. I would say, “I’m sorry,” but they were more offended by what I said than what I did. They twisted their faces up and said, “Matt. Don’t say ‘I’m sorry;’ say ‘my bad!’” 

On the flipside, whenever I’d say things like “I’m not down with that,” around my white classmates, they looked at me as if to think, “Why is he using language this way?” 

It wasn’t helpful that many of them already hated me on GP.

Granted, I was a kid who did things that the average kid would deem unorthodox or strange. I loved music - big surprise - and I sang aloud and danced in the hallways whenever I’d hear a song in my head. It didn’t help that 10 times out of 10, those songs were by Michael Jackson or some funk band from the 1970s that they never heard of. 

I talked to myself a lot, jumped around, and spoke loudly. This annoyed a great many kids my age, who were unfiltered in expressing their disdain for me. I’ll never forget being in summer camp with a kid named Tommy, who had little patience for me. When the school year started that September, he walked into the class, saw me there, and cried aloud, “Oh no! Not you!” He was just one of many kids who told me to my face, “I don’t like you,” or “You’re the most annoying kid in this school, and everyone knows it.” 

(L-R; Jackie Jackson, Randy Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Michael Jackson, and Tito Jackson, circa 1979. Photo by Govert de Roos)

Things only escalated in middle school, as older kids began getting on me about the same things, only worse and reacting more violently. Meanwhile, my peers would do things like bring a piece of candy to class for everyone except me, or in other cases, hollow out a candy wrapper to give to me, only so I could open it to nothing as they took delight in me turning around to see them laughing in my direction. 

I felt so alone as a kid, despite being one of six children. My siblings made friends easily, and I didn’t. Plus I was a very sensitive kid. When me and my brothers and sister would fight, I took things they said to heart more than I should’ve. 

All I had was TV, video games, and music. My life was like the Genesis song, “Turn It On Again,” exemplified by lines like, “All I need is a TV show/that and the radio,” and “You’re just another face that I know from the TV show/I have known you for so very long, I feel like a friend.”

I sank into my TV shows and my CDs and cassettes. My friends were Stevie Wonder, Maurice White, Marvin Gaye, and Carole King. These people sang me to sleep, comforted me when I wanted to cry, and made me laugh when I needed to smile.

But it still wasn’t enough. 

The venomous words of my classmates, and the isolation I felt from my family, really messed with my confidence. Actually, no. My confidence was all but erased. With each passing day, I sank deeper and deeper into depression, and I didn’t even realize it. It certainly didn’t help when I would tell people how I was feeling and all I got in return were accusations of hyperbole and being overly dramatic. 

(Michael Jackson in 1978. Photo by Jeffrey Scales)

With each passing day, I’d think to myself, “Nobody likes me. I wish I was never born. I wonder if I died, would anybody miss me? Would everyone feel better if I was gone? Maybe I should kill myself to spite everyone; make ‘em think it was their fault.”

One of the reasons my dependence on music increased was to drown out those voices in my head that kept telling me to step off a curb in front of a bus, or to climb to a rooftop somewhere and jump.

Cut to Christmas morning, 1995. I opened one of my numerous gifts, realizing it was full of clothes, based on the weight and thinness of the box. When my predictions turned out to be correct, it came with a fateful twist. 

Nestled in between what memory serves me, was a pair of plaid shirts for school, were two CDs. Both are by The Jacksons: Destiny (1978) and Victory (1984). As I said before, I befriended so many musicians in my mind by their albums and songs, but none of them reached the reverence and regard I held for Michael Jackson and his siblings. 

As far back as my memory can traverse - two weeks before my third birthday - Michael Jackson made an indelible impact on my life. His voice, his music, his charisma, his sensitivity, his ferocious energy, his dynamic movement, his unwavering professionalism; I was enamored with him. I would get up at 5:30 am to catch The Jackson Five Cartoon on WPIX before getting up to go to school each morning. The Jackson Five’s harmonies and connection seeped into my heart and soul. 

My parents, though perhaps put off by my fascination and borderline obsession with The Jacksons, and Michael specifically, encouraged my fandom often, gifting me cassette tapes and CDs of Jackson 5 and MJ solo albums and compilations. In this instance, however, they had (and have until they read this) no idea how much their generosity on this particular Christmas, with this particular gift, was a true turning point for me. 

I listened to Victory first, since it had “Torture” and “Body” on it. My siblings and I used to watch those music videos all the time. I realized that “The State of Shock” was the song I heard from the retrospective montage from Michael’s film, “Moonwalker.” Now, on to Destiny. 

I recognized “Blame It On the Boogie,” “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” and “Things I Do For You,” already, so I was hyped to hear the songs I was unfamiliar with. 

Following the jovial funk of “Blame It On the Boogie” was the tender ballad, “Push Me Away.” I listened to Michael sing “The tears, the pain, reality,” and it made me think of the girls I had crushes on. I fell hard for girls back then and more often than not, they were not gracious when it came to telling me that they didn’t feel the same way. 

(L-R Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Jackie Jackson, Marlon Jackson, and Michael Jackson in 1977 in London. Photo by Allan Olley/Getty Images)

Then came that chorus, with MJ using that aching falsetto: “Don’t you know…these dreams I wish could be the real you and me/I come running back to you/you push me away/you push, you push me away.” 

My goodness. 

That’s just how I was feeling! I would daydream about being with some girl I liked, imagining how a relationship between us would play out. My overactive 12 and 13-year-old mind was a trip, for sure. But I felt as Michael was singing that song, I found solace in the fact that someone could articulate something that I was struggling with. 

Then song number six, “Bless His Soul,” blew me away. This track spoke about how a person went out of his or her way to make people happy. The problem is that it leaves that person feeling sad and empty once they realize this is the wrong way to think; to make people like you by bending over backward for them. 

“Bless his soul;

It’s hard to find,

A person like you,

You’re one of a kind; 

People will cry,

If rain or sun;

You try to please all,

Then you’ll please none.” 

Whoa! After years of being bullied by kids my age, kids older than me, I’d found out over time that if I made people laugh, they would treat me better. I thought it would get me friends that way, but after talking with my parents, the optics seemed like a bunch of white kids laughing at the token Black kid who was there to amuse them - like a clown. 

Were they laughing at me or what I said? Either way, did that make them want to be my friend and like me for being a good person, or just use me for their amusement? 

Lastly, there’s the album’s eighth and final track, “That’s What You Get (For Being Polite).” This ties everything I’d been feeling up into a final thesis status. Just the opening lyrics, “Jack still cries, day and night; Jack’s not happy with his life; Wanna do this, wanna do that; Wanna be kind, but ends up flat for love.” It was like The Jacksons were inside of my head! It continued, “He tries so hard to give a lot; He wants to be what he is not; Love’s not harsh, and love’s not bad; but what he’s doin’ for love is so sad.” 

I was going out of my way to uplift people, girls especially, to get them to like me. I wanted to be someone other than who I was because I thought, “Since you don’t like Matthew Allen, maybe you’ll like this new guy who showers you with adoration. How could Michael and Randy (the song’s composers) know exactly what I was going through? How could they know about the identity crisis I was living in? The album dropped in December 1978, three and a half years before I was born! 

(Michael Jackson holding a copy of The Jacksons’ “Destiny” LP with fans during an in-store promotion in 1978 at Freeway Records in Los Angeles. Photo by Bobby Holland/MPTV Images)

What I learned from those three songs, especially “That’s What You Get (For Being Polite),” is that if someone could write a song about how I was feeling, that means I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. Sadness, isolation, alienation, and depression have an effective way of making its host feel like it’s only happening to them and no one else. It’s sickening. 

It was liberating to know that I wasn’t alone. The suicidal ideations dissipated after that - while never completely going away. Life was not as hard after understanding that it wasn’t just me going through hard times. 

Things changed after hearing Destiny that Christmas. I doubled down on my devotion to music and later began paying more attention to lyricism. Just five years later, I would hear two more songs that diagnosed feelings and events in my life that put me on the path I walk today as an award-winning music journalist…but I’ll save that for another time. 

Thank you Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jackie, and Randy Jackson. Your album helped save my life…so far.

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