Ariana Grande gave her first public worded statement about and to Mac Miller since his fatal overdose on September 7. The pop star had posted a black-and-white photograph in honor of her ex-boyfriend a couple of days after his death, though it didn’t include a caption. She had also disabled Instagram comments after trolls began to publicly and viciously blame her for Miller’s death.
“i adored you from the day i met you when i was nineteen and i always will,” wrote Grande in the caption of a video she’d taken of Miller sitting across from her at a candlelit table. She addresses her disbelief and grief over her ex-boyfriend’s death, and acknowledges the rapper’s struggle with addiction; “we talked about this,” she wrote. “so many times. i’m so mad, i’m so sad i don’t know what to do.”
“you were my dearest friend. for so long. above anything else. i’m so sorry i couldn’t fix or take your pain away,” writes Grande, as though she expected to be able to, despite knowing she couldn’t.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnt_GTOF9kb/?taken-by=arianagrande
Grande and Miller began dating in 2016 and broke up in May of this year. Under scrutiny for “jumping into” a relationship with SNL‘s Pete Davidson, Grande released a statement in her own defense in which she called her relationship with Miller “toxic.”
“I have cared for him and tried to support his sobriety & prayed for his balance for years (and always will of course),” she wrote. “But shaming/blaming women for a man’s inability to keep his shit together is a very major problem.”