This morning I woke up, knowing that today was going to be a little tough and ready to get the day over with. It’s a gloomy day, with a steady light rain cleansing the surface. I was happy to see green grass poking through the dead stuff.
While driving my son to school, the radio announced that Corey Haim had died of a prescription drug overdose. “Take it back!” I yelled at the radio. My 6 year old looked at me like I was nuts. Before they were finished announcing this sad story, my phone rang. It was my husband calling to tell me the news.
Corey Haim was my childhood crush. To say I was in love with him is an understatement. It was more like obsessed. I had planned our wedding numerous times. I knew we were soul mates. I had posters covering every inch of my walls and ceiling when I was a teen. I would trade Tiger Beat and Bop photos with my friends. They all wanted NKOTB pictures so I would collect as many as I could to trade for Corey Haim posters.
I didn’t have a lot of consistency in my life, and Corey Haim stayed with me, in many bedrooms for many years. His posters were worn and ragged with missing edges from the countless times I moved him from one home to another.
To think that he died on the same date that my Father died…Damn. It is just a coincidence, but it just makes March 10th even sadder for me.
I fell in love with Corey while watching Lucas. In the movie, he was so sweet and shy. He was also determined, and that quality reminded me of myself. He had a broken home, he was picked on at school, and he just kind of shuffled through life without being noticed much. In the end, he won the affections of his school and his town as well as the adoration of a 10 year old girl.
When Lost Boys came out, I felt like I had struck gold! My older foster siblings were drooling over Jason Patrick, but I was all about Sam. Corey had grown up from little boy to totally rad teen. I was in love. The scene with him singing in the bath tub. That was my favorite. I’d watch it over and over and sigh with stars in my eyes. He was so dreamy…
I never really understood why everyone referred to Corey Haim and Corey Feldman as “The Two Coreys” they never really seemed like a good pair to me. Just because they made a couple of movies together, and they shared the same first name. I think that paved the path for failure for both of them because it was almost like they were expected to make movies together even though they really were very different in ways that made for bad movies.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved License to Drive and the Lost Boys. But when they got around to Dream a Little Dream that is when they really should have aggressively explored their independence. I think they were waiting for the next big script that would pair them up and it never came. By the time they came out of their drug induced stupor long enough to realize it, they were already considered to be another washed up pair of Hollywood kid actor casualties.
Corey never left my heart. The good thing about movies is they can be played over and over and I would get lost in Coreyland daily, whether it was through pictures or movies, he was my future husband and that bond (though one sided) was solid as a rock.
Somehow through the years, as things changed in my life, I outgrew the Corey posters, but always had a place in my heart for him.
I watched him go from smiley kid to troubled teen. From troubled teen to the man on the A&E reality show “The Two Coreys” I was so sad for the loss of the Corey I fell in love with. That Corey was dead. Long ago buried by a mix of drugs, alcohol and prescription meds. My heart broke for the young kid with so much potential. I was disgusted with the shell of a man Corey turned out to be.
I didn’t understand why he felt his life was so hard, he couldn’t face it without some sort of high. Then came the fight between him and Corey where he broke down and said that Corey Feldman knew his “friend” had molested him and he did nothing to help him.
My heart ached for him. I know that kind of pain. It can eat you alive. For some reason, victims have a common trait, they blame themselves for what happened to them. The guilt…it consumes you. To be a successful actor, in the prime of his career…to have someone rip your innocence from you in such a disgusting way, and then know that your only friend doesn’t have your back…that explained a lot to me.
To know that Corey never got counseling for this, that he turned to drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, it is just so very sad.
I hope that Corey Feldman finally comes forward and brings justice for Corey Haim. I don’t want to know who hurt Corey, but whoever did needs to be punished for his actions. If this man is still out there, who knows how many people he has hurt along the way.
38 years old is too young to die. It is so tragic. Even though he did this to himself, his life was full of people who enabled him. This could have been avoided if someone loved him enough to step in and help him get the care he needed and helped him to understand that what happened to him was not his fault and it was not ok to bury it the way he did through all those drugs and all that anger.
Now, Corey Haim can stop running from his demons. I pray that he can finally rest in peace.
This is the way I want to remember him…
Sadly, in death there are no take backs.
Source: http://proudtobecheap.blogspot.com/2010/03/no-take-backs-corey-haim.html
