When I was a kid, I thought famous people were better than the rest of us.
Not just richer or more talented. Not just prettier or luckier. Better.
I used to think that if you were on a movie screen, under stadium lights, cutting platinum records, or hosting gallery shows, you had to be built differently. Like you came from some higher tier of humanity where things just made sense.
I know better now. We all do. But still, the surprise lingers.
Every time a headline drops with a name we recognize. Someone we’ve watched. Someone we’ve cheered for or sang along with. We act stunned. Shocked. Betrayed. Him? Her? No way. I didn’t see that coming.
Kevin Spacey. Will Smith. Bill Cosby. Diddy. R. Kelly. Michael Jackson. Lance Armstrong. O.J. Simpson. Pete Rose.
And those are just a few.
But this isn’t really about scandal. Not entirely.
This is about what happens when the image we hold of someone no longer matches who they really are. Or maybe never did.
I dated an artist once in college. We lived together for almost three years. Great girl. Brilliant. Wild in the way that made you feel alive just sitting next to her. She could sketch entire memories from scratch, paint with this fevered energy that filled the room, and hum old songs while mixing new colors. There was something magical about being around her. And I loved her.
Or I thought I did.
Looking back, I think I was in love with her as an artist more than I was in love with her as a person. Her creativity. Her fire. The way she made things beautiful just by touching them. I fell for the image. For the feelings she gave me.
But living with someone is different than watching them from across a gallery or a stage.
Living with someone means you see the parts that don’t get applause. The insecurities. The silence. The tension between what they give the world and what they hide from it.
And that’s where the lines begin to blur.
Can you love someone for what they make and not love who they are?
Can you admire the output and feel disconnected from the source?
Can you hold onto what someone gave you even after they let go of who they once were?
These are hard questions. And they don’t just apply to people we date, marry, or leave. They apply to the icons, too. The singers, actors, and athletes who shape entire chapters of our lives without ever knowing our names.
Can you still dance to Michael Jackson?
Can you still quote a Cosby special that once made you cry from laughing?
Can you still root for the comeback of someone whose truth has been complicated by time, action, and failure?
I think the real question buried in all of this is… do we love the person, or do we love the way they made us feel?
And maybe that’s the thing we’re really trying to protect.
Because the movie that changed you still changed you. The album that got you through still did its job. The painting that hangs in your hallway still pulls you in, even if you no longer speak to the person who created it.
We want things to be clean. Good art from good people. Truth told by honest mouths. Beauty untouched by contradiction.
But life doesn’t work that way.
The truth is, some of the most meaningful things we’ve ever felt were made by people we wouldn’t want to sit next to at dinner. Or people who don’t exist anymore. Or people we imagined into someone better than they really were.
So, what do we do?
Do we throw it all away?
Do we erase the stories and songs and sketches because the hands that made them were flawed?
Or do we let the work stand on its own? Let the memory hold space, even if the person behind it no longer can?
There’s no perfect answer, but here’s what I think.
It is OK to love what someone gave you without having to love everything about them.
It is OK to remember the way they made you feel even if that feeling no longer belongs to them.
And it is OK to let art live in the tension between who we are, who we thought they were, and all the space in between.
