Amy Winehouse: The Broken Wings of A Forgotten Angel

Without her signature beehive hairstyle, Amy takes on an unassuming persona. Her small body was canvased in tattoos and her single piercing above her lip completed this raven haired beauty’s allure.

I love Amy Winehouse for who she was — an apologetic, dazed, and tormented thing that sang her sorrows. Her flaws were points to accentuate over poignant melodies and tunes.

Sadness in music is poetic, but sad people are often tossed to the wayside, forgotten and scorned. This was the reality of Amy, where her music catapulted her to heights of fame and adoration, we forgot the sadness that she channelled so well just might be real.

With low eyes and stuttered words Ms.Winehouse says in an interview:

Life’s really short…you gotta go out there and seize the day

Her lips twitch from her drug induced fidget as she powers through the interview, strung between reality and her high, yet all we did was laugh at her, mock her and relish in her self-destruction. It went beyond our disdain for her smudged eyeliner and slouching shoulders, we criticized her body, she was never good enough for us. One minute she was too fat, the next we called her anorexic, both times forgetting we were tormenting a tormented soul.

I was in love you know, but I knew it wouldn’t work out

She says about where her inspiration from her hit single Rehab came from. From this heartbreak Amy explains that her downward spiral worried everyone and so they tried to get her to admit herself into a rehab. Yet, through all this rawness of her words the only thing you will notice from the interview is her bloodshot eyes and incoherence.

Amy’s truth was not dressed up and placed on an interview couch, it was exposed and oozing venom from an incapacitated young woman, and so, not until she died did we ever consider the weight of her words.

Often we imagine that people who need help scream it from mountain tops. Amy reminds us that screams are old school, denial and destuction are the novel ways to show you need assistance. If only we knew right?

This seems to be the question that even her ex-husband grapples with to this day. The world knew that she was addicted to heroin and rejoiced when she finally cleaned up her drug habit, but was alcholism farfetched?

He ex-husband Blake said in a 2016 interview that:

Amy drank miniatures — it was her only way of having a semblance of control over the situation. She would have six or seven every day.

But that way she could tell herself she hadn’t had a full bottle. It was like a heroin addict smoking heroin, but saying, ‘At least I don’t inject it.

Amy quickly replaced her heroin with alcohol and while we continued to criticize, she turned bottles to her head and drowned out the noise. On July, 23 2011, she silenced us for good. There would be no more Amy to pull apart, no more interviews to cringe through, she turned the bottle to her head for the last time and just like that…she was gone.

Only then did we see her broken wings, majestic silhouette and crude sadness as art. We had her, we forgot her and we watched her wither away in front of us.

To say that it was our fault why she disappeared from our lives too soon, is misleading but to say that we didn’t egg her on or hasten her demise would also be inaccurate. We had and angel right here and let her slip through our fingers.

For Amy. I love you. I am sorry.