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I remember the morning everything changed, I remember getting up in the cold room and walking out to the kitchen to make breakfast, I remember seeing mum sitting there with her mum. Her mother had her arm on my  mums back and mum was just staring out the window. I remember thinking okay that’s a bit strange but also I was hungry so I didn’t think to much about it. Then mum opened her mouth and said she needed to tell me something. I was a little scared at this point because there were tears running down her face and she looked so white. Like a ghost. She told me that dad had just passed away. That he was sick and didn’t make it. She broke down at this point and all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry anymore. I felt sick, what did she mean? I had only just seen him recently and he seemed fine? Sure he seemed a little lonely but he had just come and seen us the day before to say goodbye ( which I didn’t think anything of at the time) was only just out the back of his house digging a trench a week ago, he had only just taken us for lunch at McDonalds. What did she mean he had died? I felt overwhelmed with shock, I didn’t believe it. No way, dad didn’t die, he couldn’t have. Mum hugged me which I always hated. Hugging made me feel awkward. But this was a big hug, almost confirming that dad had died to me. I walked back to my room nd sat on the bed, staring at the white walls and trying to come to terms with what just happened. I was only 11, dad wasn’t supposed to die yet. We were supposed to have many more years, he was my person, my favorite parent you could say, He cant be gone, he just cant.

But he was, as the other children woke up they were told the same thing until the whole family was quiet, shocked by the news, the house felt so much colder now. My older siblings were more vocal about there pain, they cried and hugged and grieved together, but me and my brother went and sat in our rooms. I didn’t really feel anything, I didn’t feel sad, I didn’t cry, I didn’t want to be around my other siblings, I just wanted to be alone.

Family started to show up at the house later that day, mums sisters showed up one by one wanting to hug us all which I hated. Everyone was just crying everywhere I looked , I felt like maybe I should cry to, so I went to me room and tried to force myself to cry. But nothing come out. What was wrong with me?! My dad just died crying should be happening automatically and I cant even force it to happen. I left my room to an amazing smell filling the house, someone had come over and started cooking chow Mein for us in the kitchen, the smell was so inviting and warm, it felt like a warm hug, but not the physical kind of hug because I hated them, it was more of a mental hug. There’s nothing like a big warm fresh bowel of food to cheer everyone up right? But no one really ate except me and my brother. We were so young we weren’t physically and mentally capable of processing what had happened like the others, we kind of just went about our days. I don’t know if my brother cried behind closed doors or if he just sat on his bed staring at the white walls like I did.

And the funeral, well that was something else. I had never been to one before and it was the first time I was in a room full of complete sadness, there was pain in eyes everywhere I looked. People were crying, some wore sunglasses to hide it but it was obvious behind those shades that there were tears. I didn’t cry though, I was still in shock especially from the viewing we had a few days before. I literally stood in a room and stared at the corpse of what used to be my father and it was traumatizing. He was there but he wasn’t. And after that I never wanted to see a dead person ever again.

As the days went on more family and friends would show up with food or gifts and even more hugs. There was sadness everywhere. I was sitting in my room one day and my aunty come in, she tried talking to me about it all but I didn’t have much to say other then I wanted to paint. I loved painting and for me at that time it was a way of dealing with it all, I started painting dads name amongst a sunset and my aunty just sat and watched me. It was a nice moment for me. It was a step forward with the grieving process. But I still hadn’t cried, and I wondered if I ever would. One of the ladies mum worked with was married to a big shot doctor, and they had gifted us with a week away in Sunraysia resort in Mildura. We all went and spent the week in the warm sun, swimming, playing golf, watching shitty tv, it was something nice to come from a shitty situation. The days seemed like they were starting to get a little easier for mum and the others, I still felt sick every time I thought about dad and the fact I wasn’t going to see him again. But life went on, we all went back to school and we all started to grow up without dad being there to see ny of it. His birthday would arrive and mum would ask if we wanted to have a special tea for him, which was just takeout from somewhere but it was nice to do something to remember him by. We did this for a few years until we just stopped one year, we stopped celebrating him and we stopped talking about him, I remember still feeling so sick about it all, I couldn’t shake this feeling inside me and I think by not getting professional help I wasn’t ever really given the tools to grieve the way I needed to, we should’ve seen a counsellor, mum should have. She started drinking a lot, I think it was her way of self medicating, but it made her really angry at times, sometimes I just felt like a punching bag.

As the years continued on dad became a distant memory we never spoke of, it was like we couldn’t anymore, it was just to hard. But I thought I was doing okay. I would make jokes about his death in school which is really messed up to think of now but at the time I think it was a cry for help. My school ended up having a meeting with myself and the school counsellor to discuss the issue and how they could help. But I had shut down from it all by now, it had been so long where we just pretended he didn’t exist anymore, like the pain didn’t exist anymore. So I just said I was fine and didn’t need any help. But God knows I did. I needed professional help but since I hadn’t gotten it for so long it had become normal to me to feel this emptiness, to feel so cold where you could joke about your dads death? Yup, that was me.

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One night my best friend was sleeping over and she had been talking to a guy that lived down the road and we ended up sneaking out of my place to see him and his friend, which was actually my friends brother, we were all standing around chatting when the guy my friend was seeing started to joke around, he was so drunk that even when the jokes were shitty they were still hilarious because he was so drunk he said it in a way that just made you laugh. God I loved that night, up until he let out a simple sentence that changed my life forever. All of a sudden he mentioned my dads death and how he killed himself. I just froze. I said what, and my friend responded with ‘’you weren’t supposed to mention it she doesn’t know’’. And I said ‘’no what?’’ And by then it had gone so far there was no turning back. For so long I thought dad had died because he was sick because that’s what I was told by mum. I had assumed that he had gotten sick and just passed away due to cancer or something like that. But they ended up telling me the truth about how dad died and I will never forget that moment as much as iv always wanted to. I couldn’t move, i felt sick and upset and very angry at mum. I was angry that she hadn’t sat me down and told me the truth about it. I was angry that for so long she allowed me to think that this world took him from us, but now I knew he chose to leave and that broke my heart. How could he want that? How could anyone want that, I felt like shit most of the time but I was dealing with it in my own way, So why couldn’t he have just dealt with it like I did? The night had been ruined by that point. The guys ending up leaving and we went back inside and me and my friend chatted about it and she told me exactly what she had been told, I shut down for the rest of the night. All I wanted to do was go and yell at mum but I was to heartbroken to move. How long was this going to go on for? Was she ever intending on telling me the truth? Yes I understand that he obviously was sick but she should’ve told me the whole truth, someone should’ve. I shouldn’t have had to find out by a drunk friend accidentally blurting it out 3 years later.

I struggled to sleep that night, I couldn’t get it out of my head what had just happened and when i saw mum I was instantly furious, I never said anything to her though, but now I felt even worse then I did before. And I needed to find a new way to deal with things because I couldn’t cope with the amount of pain that was inside me. I needed to escape it all like he did.

By the age of 16 i had been introduced to alcohol and it had become something i used to escape how shit i felt all the time, for a moment alcohol seemed to make all those shitty feelings go away, it would make me feel good for a little while before everything come crashing down and I would loose it, i would cry and become an absolute drunken mess, the kind you see at a party and think I'm glad that isn’t me. Well it was me and because alcohol brought me a brief moment of happiness I continued to do it, despite the absolute mess I would become after, that brief moment was a high for me that I continued to chase. My friends would always end up in the crossfire of it all and they would always have to end up taking care of me because when your that drunk you cant take care of yourself.

I would take a bottle of vodka to a party and by the end of it 90% of the bottle was gone and what do you know, there’s me crying in a corner to my friend again. Sorry guys!! It was like I was mimicking the behavior of my mum, she had become such a big drinker, she would drink every night, and nearly every day she would come home with a wine casket and would just drink, I’m pretty sure the only meal she ate was dinner, the rest of her diet was just wine. And I had started to do the same. Little did I realize I was only hurting myself more by doing this but I think also when I was that drunk I could cry, and I would cry over and over and I would feel everything. It allowed me to be so emotional that I would start grieving and I think because I hadn’t ever really done that in the first place that it was a way of me getting it finally out, in the worst way possible though. I cant recall a drunken night where I didn’t get emotional. It was a toxic cycle of briefly feeling good and then feeling everything all at once and exploding. But I continued to do it for years and no one really knew what to do about it, christ I didn’t even no, all I knew was that I wanted to be drunk all the time. Half of the time we would have a girls night intending on hitting the pubs and I would hit the alcohol so hard that I would never make it out. Someone would have to drive me home while I was crying in the back, I remember getting home one night and just crying in the shower and mum kept asking me what was wrong and I just wanted her to go away so she called my sister for advice as she didn’t no what to do, my sister ended up coming over in an attempt to try and calm me down, and I think it did, I’m not sure if it did because of her presence or if I had just used up all my tears and finally got to the point where all I needed was bed. Who knows.

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Amongst all the alcohol ii had started to find attraction to men, especially older ones. I had missed having a relationship with my father and so seeked out connection from other males to make up for what I had missed out on, feeling wanted by a male made me feel really good. It was like another high for me. And when you feel low most of the time you’ll do anything to feel that kind of high. And for me alcohol and men did that, they were able to make me feel really good, they were also able to make me feel really bad. But the point was that I was actually feeling things, which was something I was unable to do on my own. I was self-medicating between the grog and the boys. It was a horrible way of dealing with things but It was my go to for years, for years I drank myself silly and slept around constantly chasing that high. I didn’t care what they guys actually thought about me, as long as they wanted to sleep with me I knew they wanted me, and I knew I would feel that high that I was craving to feel again, it was a messed up way of thinking. But hey, if you cant tell by now  I was pretty messed up!

After a while I started talking to a guy who really grabbed my attention, it was the first time I had started to want something with a male other then jut sex. I started talking to him regularly and I started to realize that it made me feel really good as well,  so I continued to pursue this connection and I ended up falling HARD! I’m talking obsessed, I thought this guy was everything, he gave me butterflies he made me feel really wanted and I hadn’t even slept with him yet! I think that was a bit of a breakthrough for me, for so long things had gone a certain way but this guy really changed things for me, I started to feel a little better about myself ,he made me feel so loved, at least he did for a while before it all come crashing down. Surprise surprise! And it was all on my end as well. I fucked up, in the process of talking to this guy I had started talking to another guy as well, he also made me feel really good. So it was hard to choose which one to pick, So now I have two guys who make me feel amazing, why have one when you can have two right? Wrong, That was a big mistake, both guys ended up finding out about each other and in the end neither of them wanted me anymore. Had I just self sabotaged myself without even realizing? Did I do it because I was more worried about how they made me feel over anything else? Or was I worried they would leave me in the end like dad did so I had to do something to jeopardize it before they could. The truth is all those reasons were why. And low and behold I was alone again, back to feeling empty and cold,, so what did I do? You guessed it, I started sleeping with other men again, and I hit the alcohol pretty hard, it was how I knew to turn a bad feeling into a good one. I ended up sleeping with one of those guys I liked as well, it wasn’t an emotional connection that made it happen though, he didn’t want me like that anymore, he just wanted to sleep with me now, and he did. But after that happened I didn’t hear from him again. I was devastated by what I did, I cried for weeks wondering how I could ruin something so good for myself, I ended up just telling myself that I deserved  it. And I believed it, I was a mess, how could anyone love someone who doesn’t even love themselves. So I hit the alcohol super hard and for a little while it helped until I got to drunk and que tears and emotional wreck. Looking back I probably should’ve stayed away from alcohol  especially at that point in time but I chased the brief feeling of happiness it gave me, like I said when you feel like shit all the time you’ll do anything to feel better even if its short lived.