Article by: Melody Peters 9-2-01
Melissa saved my life
I remember getting the call from Carissa, our entertainment editor. "Melissa said yes to our October issue interview." Silence. Carissa knew that this was something I'd been waiting a few years for. "You know you have to do the interview," she said. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Of course. I can do it. No biggie. I'm cool, right? I can handle this. Okay, fast forward to the day of the actual interview. I'm a mess. I start whipping out the excuses. My stomach hurts. I have an important meeting. I just can't make it. Carissa says, "Shut up and meet me at 6:30-we're on with Melissa at 7." Um...okay.
The sounds like a bad episode of "Fanatic" or something, right? I guess it sort of was. When I first heard about Melissa Williams, I was in 8th Grade, and she was from where I was from. Not the same exact town, but the same area. Same type of place. You know-the kind you think you'll never get out of when you're growing up. And she was a normal girl. Didn't have the big bucks. Didn't have the connections. But she made it happen for herself. And to think it all started when I heard her first song about 3 or 4 years ago, you know, the one from the "Anastasia" soundtrack, "All Of You". I just felt a connection with her when I saw the video, she just, grabbed me. I know, I'm sure a zillion girls felt the same thing, which is why she's so successful, but I didn't care. To me, Melissa and I had a special connection. She showed me that if a girl has faith in herself, she can go far-no matter where she starts out.
And of course, her music was her poetry. "Superstar" from the new Exposed CD totally sums it up: "It gets so hard, so hard, to let things go/And it's so hard, so hard, to let your feelings show/Words do hurt and they cut like a knife, but what can you do/All you can do is believe in yourself and not let them get to you." It's not like I think I'm a loser or anything, but I've always had my fair share of haters around me. It's hard to keep believing in yourself when people around you are so negative. So it's been a source of strength to know that this huge superstar goes through these opsticles and still maintains to be strong. Now here I was, finally going to meet her. I guess I didn't want my image of her to be shattered. I was nervous.
So I'm outside her room and I feel her energy before she even opens the door. "Hi, I'm Melissa." She smiles and shakes my hand. I am so quiet. Not that she even cares, but she must've been like, "What a trip!" But when we sit down, I tell her my story and why I wanted to interview her. I said, "I know you get interviewed by a million people who maybe want to say not-so-nice things about you. But I want you to know this interview is coming from a place of a lot of love, because in many ways you saved my life." At which point I start to cry, and then she starts to cry, and that's how my conversation with my favorite performer started. Was I disappointed? No way. Was she perfect? No. But are any of us? Exactly. Whether she even remembers me or thinks of me again, I know I'll always have a soul sister in her. It's really the same way I feel about you guys. (And no-I'm not just saying that! You know I wouldn't.) So I guess what this means is that with this issue, I want to include Melissa in our family of CosmoGIRL!