My Life

My Life

Where was I? I came into this world on a very insignificant day on this blue green black red planet. It was in June. I was born in winter. It was also the sixth, so I have two 6's in my birth date. What a fucking shame it weren't 3. And it was 1981. And during the course of my life, however, I came to realise one very simple fact. We die. You will die, I say it again, you will die. Your best friend will die. Everyone dies. It's what you do on the journey that counts.

I began 7th of February, 1996 like I begin most days. Wake, get ready for school. Sleep a little more then wait outside for a lift to the train station. On the way there I glimpse at my old crush standing at the bus stop, wondering if she has a clue that just 2 years ago she was my world.

Once at the train station, I talk shit with my buddy Kristian. We talk bout the usual crap. At school though things lighten up. Julie is there, and being a Thursday we have Japanese that day. Totally cool. I have a great grin when I get to the hang out. I am the total nerd, and the spot is in front of the library.

"You're such a fucking fool, there is no way that a 7/7 creature with a 4 mana upkeep is better than keldon warlord!" says my nerdy mate Max.

"Get stuffed, keldy is shithouse!" retorts Peter, yet another library nerder.

This is such a typical start to the day, but I saw Julie and I know she will be in Jap today. I still haven't figured out why I love her so, at that stage I kept having great debates over weather it was a crush or a love. Being a 80kg 14yr old kid, i had only one very quick girlfriend, so I was still inexperienced in these fields.

The day rolls on to Japanese. Have you ever watched a person with elegance try to say shita in seriousness? or Fukira? I soak up every minute until there is a knock on the class door. There is a message for me saying mum will pick me up from school after class. I think nothing more of it and go back to Julie staring.

Waiting after class was mum. And from this point on, life changed. Do you know what cancer is? Do you think a kid does? As mum drives the 40 mins back home talking about all the medical workings of cancer, I realise, hard and heavy, that life is about to suck.

I never got along with dad. I never even called him dad, it was Les. Always Les. Sure we had times, as I'm sure some do, but he was never really a "child" person.

Day after day

My home life is changed

And everything around me seems to age

I'm just a kid

Yet Les' not the same

He's got a cancer that will cause so much pain

Alone in this world

With no-one to share

And no-one seems to try and care.

Just stuck in the way.

My life is today

And every now and then I try and fade away.

Suspected lung cancer, due to shading in right lung lower quadrant. What the fuck does that mean? I sure as hell didn't know. I just kept running the word through my head trying to get a connection. Cancer, cancer, cancer.

It appears that the cancer is malignant, and that he will have a greatly lessened life expectancy. In other words Les is going to die. I just got told that my dad will die. And at that stage it meant a bit, but never really sunk in. How can that, you cannot grasp the loss that one will feel.

Over the following months I had to grow a lot. My brother and mum become primary carers. As a consequence I was often sidestepped in questions. Relos and friends would ring. "How's your dad? And your mum hows she going? and Brendan is he going ok?" I can only remember 1 person specifically asking how I was feeling.

Have you ever seen a person that was 16 stone collapse to 8 stone? That's half their body weight. This man I thought was the strongest person alive, became the size of some kids in my year.

Worse still was school. I hated school in year 9. I started not going to be at home, but that was depressing as well, so I just wagged home and school. I had one teacher tell me that school was too important and I should try and attend. Other teachers didn't have a clue. I wagged about 60% of year 9 from memory. My friends didn't understand, they were all still kids. I got into a punch up with one in front of a teacher when he said something bad about Les. That was just eons of built up anger coming out. In fact the only days I liked going to school was when Julie was there.

As the months grew nearer and nearer, the amount of herbal cures for cancer and religious experts we had to endure grew. Les was religious, in his own special way. Everyone else wasn't. Having to listen to people that didn't know him, or knew him in a limited sense, praying every day was horrible. It was to the stage of torture. Why are these fucking pricks stealing time that I could have with my dad. If they weren't in there praying for when he dies, he could have gotten on living.

And so there I was, knowing the route to the local hospital with palliative care unit by heart. Then the occasional day to school, and listen to all the bullshit they feed you. Many times along the way I had thought about ending it. Worst still my anger was building and building and building.

5th August 1996. Leslie Graham Grayson dies of pneumonia due to malignant lung cancer. I am woken, and we then clean him, for the final time. I remember thinking, in the way only a sudden jolt can, that "oh good, now I don't have to hold his old fella up when he pees anymore." Instead I shave my dads face and brush his teeth. I try and keep his jaw shut but it just stays open. I look at the colour of his skin, the paleness, the yellow. The size of his shrunken body. I'm 15 and I am looking at my dead dad.

Life, I thought was going to at least stabilise for a while. But by my 16th, we had moved, and mum had moved in with her new partner, partly because she liked being with him, but mostly because mum and I fought. Leaving me with a complete house to myself.

I never was exactly perfect, but some things changed. Some big things. A parent dieing seems to be one. Moving another. Moving from your friends another and yet one more finding out your mum has a closer bond to your two brothers.... two half brothers (different dad, though grew up with les) then she does to you.

And still school. In year 10 now. 1997. School certificate year. I had one teach stop and ask me where was my uniform.

"In the wash, it rained yesterday."

"Why didn't you take it off?"

"I was at school."

"Why didn't your mum?"

"She doesn't live with me."

"Why didn't your dad?"

"He's dead."

"Oh.... oh I'm sorry when did that happen."

"You should know you signed the fucking condolence card."

And the anger builds. I am now a child trapped in an adult's life. My school life tends to be a case of turning up late, going through the ritual of school work, beating on some kid in year 8,9 12 whatever that's talking shit to a female, then going home.

There is one saving grace. Julie. Julie just happens to start being there for me, I think subconsciously. She starts to lean on me for support, the one thing I still manage to do. Having your stress-scaling factor stretched out makes for a very interesting result, nothing that worries most teens bothers you. Dad grounded me. My dad died. Mum took away my allowance. My dad died. No contest. But Julie does stump me. She needs me cause she is at her 10 of stress. Infact, I still feel I had it easier than she.

Finally one day mum gets pissed of about the house being a mess... no not a mess... a dump... cockroaches and maggots were regular company... when I say mess, consider collecting 10 weeks garbage and just pour it into a house, and your close. I think the house was messed for a number of reasons, but mostly because I was so fucked in the head. I went from being a little kid playing spotlight and camping in tents in the backyard to being pretty much my own legal guardian. I even said once I feel like an orphan. The house was a mess and mum kicked me out.

Now I am on the streets. I camp outside the school the first night. And then still got up and went to school. I stunk so bad without a shower that day. The next night I slept outside the centrelink office. Dump move. This was gang area and being woken by having your face kicked is not recommended. I got into 3 fights... 3 beatings.... that week. I should probably emphasis how horrible these fights were. I had been in fights before, fights at school. Where there are maybe 2 punches thrown. These were beatings... I was outnumbered, I was pulverised. Turned into human mince.

The next week centrelink place me in a youth hostel and gave me my allowance. I spend the next 5 months in the youth hostel, not bad since your suppose to move within a month, but the staff there liked me quite a lot. Most days being quite standard, well... quite standard for youth hostel's. Since the board was $5 a week (which included food), I spent vast amounts of money on alcohol and some on drugs. Also there were people there that had friends suiciding, there were people that seemed to like fighting me, and others still that loved to steal. Whilst attempting year 11, year one of the HSC. Many times throughout this experience I had thought of suicide. It'd be so easy. I even tried once, and still bare a scare, albeit faint on my wrist. But I had one, then two reasons to stay around.

The first was Julie. She still needed me, and Christ knows I loved... no I love her more than even she realises.

Second though was Simone. Simone was one of my friends in the youth hostel. Incredibly intelligent and a natural beauty beyond words. She also was one of the strongest people I know. We started of as just buddies, nothing more. But one night coming back from the movies we had an some kids starting shit. The built up anger I had finally had the means to rear its head. I probably would have ripped those fuckers apart with my bars hands.

This one incident got us talking, and we became closer. Then hell again broke loose. She had lost, in 2 weeks, 3 of her friends to suicide. She had broken down in my arms on 3 occasions in 2 weeks. I broke every rule at that hostel, or more the point, had a blind eye turned so I could be with her those nights. I remember the 3rd notice she was so upset she lost bladder control. Her 3 best friends had killed themselves. Simone and I had such an unusual friendship, I felt like a brother, a father, a husband. I was there to comfort her in her time of greatest need.... and I knew only too well what I must have been like.

Simone eventually moved back home. Last time I saw her, she had finished year 10, finished a tafe course, and was working and living with her mum. Last time I saw her will probably be the last time, but in that moment, that catching up with my friend, the world opened and showed all the beauty that life holds.

After 5 months or so in the hostel, I moved back into the old house with some other tenets. They were average people to get along with. Meanwhile every single relative thought I was a prick. A worthless arsehole. Most I think would have been happy to see the Grayson line gone, me and Les, one quick little wipe out.

School became a blur. Indeed all of these years became a blur. I am only writing from basic memory, and am bound to have fucked up the times somewhere. By this stage Julie had left high school, so I spent countless hours going to her house instead. I know that I actually wagged about 1 1/2 to 2 school years from 7-12, a record still not beaten.

Year 12 started to roll around, and by this time I moved in with my brother Andrew and Megan, his partner. Now everything seemed rosy on the surface, but scratch a little and you'd see the tension. I was still trying to come to terms with everything... my last 3 years had been one big constant fuck up.

Don't get me wrong, Andrew and Megan took me in and treated me like a family member, but the fact was it still wasn't my family. It still wasn't a mum or a dad. I still felt forced into their world, and I know that everyday I was there, they felt me burden them.

Meanwhile year 12 still goes on, and I still keep going the bare essential time, spending time with Julie or not even there. By the time the HSC is over and done with, i get 57.5 which at the time felt like a complete failure. Looking back, I am fucking proud of that score. Look at all the shit I had been through to get that mark.

I then repeated, and Andrew and Megan have me as a burden for another year. Julie and I are now as close as 2 people can get. I love her unquestionably, and, surprisingly, she returns the love. Her presence there for me, through those 3 years and beyond, when no-one else would, is unquestionably the reason why I am alive.

When Andrew and Megan got married in 2000, and I have Julie there, by my side, hand in hand. I finally, FINALLY, felt my world is becoming better. Yet on this day, this grand day, Megan's friend makes a not so subtle remark about there being company in Andrew and Megan's house, and hoping the annoyance would move soon or some shit.

I didn't show it then, but I blew up inside. How dare she say that, has she lived my life? Has she gone through the absolute hell I had? Had she been threatened with a syringe? Or almost been gang bashed, only escaping because of a police car strolling by? Had she seen her father die at 15? Had she a fucking clue? Has her mother, told her to her fucking face that she loves your brothers more? That she never really loved your dad either?

And then it finally dawned on me. It dawned about a week after the wedding. All the shit unloaded, and I sent my first of many emails to Julie, consisting of me crying. Me crying in self pity, self-loss.

I was shattered, not in a mental breakdown style, but more in a style where you realise how fucked up your life really is. A realisation.

I will turn 21 in less than 2 months, and I still have no dad.