‘I was ten. I was in school, and they called me out of class and made me sit in the office with the receptionist for ages. She was playing games with me. It was really nice. You know, I thought—- At the time—- It was really nice. I thought must’ve done something good and they were rewarding me by letting me play games with the receptionist. Really they were just waiting for my grandma to get there to tell me. The school didn’t wanna be the ones. I mean, who would?

Kid, your mum and dad are dead. Car crash. Classic.

I wasn’t angry at first. I was sad, and confused, but I had other family. And I was sort of religious at the time so I had—- I felt like I had God.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. I was the kid with dead parents. People liked me, sure, but no one ever knew what to say. Parents stopped their kids from seeing me. Isn’t that crazy? Parents. So I had no friends, but I have my grandma and my grandpa, and I have God, but God is on really thin ice because—- I get it. God has a plan. Did that plan really have to involve my parents dying?

When I was fourteen my grandma got a pretty devastating breast cancer diagnosis. We used to sit around every night and watch TV, and play games, and eat nice—- Really nice home cooked food. When my grandma started getting sick, we stopped. She just couldn’t do anything anymore. One Christmas we managed to get her out of the hospital because things were looking up. Until they weren’t. She never came home again after that. I’m starting to get pissed off at God by now, because you’re supposed to be my friend. And I’m still just a fucking kid.

So then it’s just me and grandpa, and he starts to get really depressed. I didn’t get it at the time. I’d never seen someone with depression before, especially an older person. I thought he was being lazy. It actually started to annoy me. Part of me wishes I could go back—- Be there for him, knowing now what I didn’t know then. Maybe I could’ve helped. He used to paint all the time. And when grandma died— That was it. He stopped. One of the last conversations I had with him was—- I asked him grandpa, why did you stop painting? And he said kid, I only ever painted my happiness.

He died peacefully in his sleep later that same year. I’d become pretty self sufficient by then for a fourteen year old, and I was used to him spending days in bed at a time, so it took me a couple of days before I noticed. After that I bounced around with family and friends until I turned seventeen, packed my shit, and moved into a van. I couldn’t take being around people anymore.

So I’m seventeen, in a van, and I’m all alone, and I’m realising that I’ve never really been happy. I’ve been full, and I’ve been safe. I’ve been held. I’ve been warm. But happy—- Never. I never had the chance. Something was always missing. And now I’m getting really fucking pissed off, and fuck God, ‘cause I believed for so, so long that everything had a purpose but the truth is we’re just bugs. Fucking bugs. The world doesn’t exist for us. We just happened to be one day and someone decided that that must make us important but we’re not. None of us. I came to that conclusion one night when I was up late, fucked up and high out of my mind. I thought—- You know, I thought maybe I should just kill myself but—- I owe it to myself, and to them, to try and be happy. At least try.

So I’m trying.’