‘I want to live!”
Those were the words of Michael Jackson’s distraught daughter, Paris, as she was being rushed to West Hills Hospital after cutting herself with a kitchen knife and swallowing nearly two dozen painkillers early Wednesday morning.
Some have characterized the episode as a suicide attempt, but Jackson family members are labeling it “another cry for attention” by a tantrum-prone 15-year-old who can’t always get her way — and is desperate for sane parenting.
“This latest episode was scary for everyone,” said a family member who was there. “She’s basically kicking and screaming when the paramedics came, saying, ‘I want to live. I do. I just don’t want to live here. I wish my daddy was here.’ ”
While it was widely reported that Paris used a meat cleaver to cut herself and left a suicide note, a family source emphatically said there was no note and no cleaver. “She cuts, yes, she cuts, OK. We are aware, and her problems and concerns are being addressed, but there was no meat cleaver, it was a regular . . . kitchen knife.”
The family’s lavish compound in Calabasas, Calif., has not been a peaceful place for Paris.
She battled her famous aunt, Janet Jackson, when the “Control” singer tried to snatch her cellphone in a confrontation caught on camera.
She’s also argued with her guardian, grandmother Katherine Jackson, 83, refusing to pick up clothes off her bedroom floor and failing to make her bed. Paris complained that her grandmother is absent far too much, in part because of a civil trial in which the matriarch is seeking billions from concert promoter AEG Live.
Paris also has been prone to outbursts, slamming her bedroom door, turning up the volume on Kurt Cobain music before tightly tugging on photos of her late father, whose images cover her bedroom walls.
It’s behavior not uncommon to teens, but then not every teen is heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune being fought over by one of the most famously dysfunctional families in show business.
It’s a fact she’s reminded of every day, particularly on Twitter. Recently, tweets to Paris have ruthlessly railed, “ur dad deserved 2 die, he wuz a pedo,” and “u are not MJs bio kid, white trash.”
After a childhood in which Jacko put masks on his three children to protect them from a hungry public, Paris has been encouraged to make more public appearances by the Jackson family, including one-on-one television interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres.
It is a far cry from the cocoon of love and attention her dad tried to create for his three children — despite his own chaotic life.
After being acquitted on child-sex-abuse charges in 2005, Jacko and his kids became vagabonds, taking up quarters in Bahrain, Ireland, Great Britain, New Jersey and Las Vegas before finally settling into a rented mansion in Holmby Hills, Calif., in 2008.
But insiders saw a loving dad.
“He had problems, but those children were everything to Michael. He’d build dollhouses, treehouses, play kids games with them,” said a family source.
Jacko held story time regularly and often sang a lullaby to Paris at bedtime.
He lavished the children with gifts, but Jacko also chastised his mother for “spoiling them.” She loved to ply them with ice cream and fast food, and gave them so much attention it sometimes created an awkwardness with her 22 other grandchildren.
The boys often dressed in kilts and Paris in bright, flowery outfits. “It was always, ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ the best of manners Mike taught them,” the source said.
Jacko also made it a point to keep the children away from his siblings and dad, Joe.
Even after his death in 2009, when Paris was 11, Jacko continued to provide for his children. They and Katherine receive slightly more than $86,000 a month in allowance from the Gloved One’s bulging estate. And the kids stand to collect billions more — including a windfall from the rights to much of the famous Beatles catalog, which the estate co-owns with Sony Music — when they reach age 30.
But their mansion home, with its well-manicured lawns and picturesque landscape, has been a lonely place of late.
Paris has been described as “depressed,” even seeing a doctor at UCLA Medical Center last year at the behest of a cousin.
“There’s very little adult guidance. Prince [age 16] is out a lot, and he’s dating, and poor Blanket [age 10] is still in a shell, and that bothers Paris a lot because she’s spent a tremendous amount of energy protecting her brothers,” the source said, adding that Katherine is “tired.”
Co-guardian T.J. Jackson doesn’t have a 24-hour presence at the home, and the only other adult, cousin Trent Jackson, helps Katherine with errands and has been escorting her to and from court.
At home, the source said, Paris recently has gone into a shell, too, locking herself in her bedroom, sometimes skipping meals.
Against Katherine’s wishes, she regularly posts messages online that can be seen by her more than 1.2 million Twitter followers.
Katherine is also pained by Paris’ penchant for late-night telephone use and her staying up until dawn some days.
In the last few months, Paris has repeatedly cropped her hair and sometimes wears Gothic jewelry and apparel. She’s also painted her fingernails black and recently posted YouTube videos giving instructions on how to properly apply makeup.
“She doesn’t want to be told she cannot do something. When she’s told that, whether it’s [Katherine] or anyone else, she lashes out,” a family source said.
Two days before her suicide attempt, she tweeted: “Don’t listen to a word I say. The screams all sound the same.”
Last week, Paris expressed a desire to attend a Marilyn Manson concert, but none of the adults charged with looking after her bothered to secure passes, leading Paris to throw a fit.
Paris does have her own debit card, but Katherine has refused to allow her to possess charge cards and carry cash. Security guards handle all payments when the children shop or hit local stores.
Also, it appears the young princess has had love troubles.
A family source said she was upset, but “not necessarily heartbroken,” a couple of weeks ago by a young boy at school.
She recently hinted at heartache via Twitter.
“Don’t kiss someone one day if you plan on seeing someone else the next,” Paris tweeted on May 28. The next day she wrote, “Love is dumb and so are you.”
Finally, and much to her dismay, Paris is one of Katherine’s key witnesses in the civil suit against AEG, the promoter for Jacko’s ill-fated “This Is It” concert tour.
Paris is scheduled to take the stand, and while she appeared calm during depositions this year, family members say she’s been nervous and even reluctant to give public testimony.
“Everything is about money in that house, and if you look at the AEG lawsuit, Paris doesn’t really know whether the motive is justice or money,” a source said.
The family alleges AEG was negligent in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray to care for Jacko, who died in 2009 from an overdose of the drug propofol.
Murray, who illegally administered the drug at the singer’s home to help Jacko sleep, is serving a four-year prison term after being convicted two years ago of involuntary manslaughter in his death.
“Jackie, Tito and Marlon are probably the only siblings who don’t get involved in these things, but still there is little reverence of Michael by the family privately,” the source said. “When she sees one of her aunts and uncles on television or reads an interview they’ve given, she feels they are just feigning their love for Michael. She feels the motive is only to capitalize on Michael, and she doesn’t like it.”
Seeking an escape from the Jackson madness, Paris recently spoke of legally emancipating herself from the family, a source said.
She has spent a lot of time lately with her biological mom, Debbie Rowe, at Rowe’s farm in the Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles.
As legal proceedings in the AEG case have progressed into their second month, new child-abuse allegations from former Jacko friend and protégé Wade Robson also surfaced, as well as testimony that the Gloved One looked like a “cancer patient” to paramedics who responded to his home four years ago.
“Paris is seeing all of this, hearing all of this, and her name is in this because [Katherine] put Paris and Prince and Blanket on as plaintiffs without consulting them and without their approval,” another source said.
Sandra Ribera, Katherine’s legal rep, said Paris is understandably sensitive. “Being a sensitive 15-year-old is difficult no matter who you are,” Ribera said. “It is especially difficult when you lose the person closest to you.”
Stacy Brown is a freelance journalist and former friend of the Jackson family.