-My room was full of puppies and kittens
and animals and forests.
And in this transitional period,
I also knew that puppies and kittens weren't cool,
that, like, Kurt Cobain was.
So then I had this huge poster of Kurt Cobain,
and at the bottom, it just said,
"I hate myself and I want to die."
And I was 13.
I knew that diaries were where girls wrote down,
like, all the important events in their life.
I had this one journal that I was saving for
when something really exciting happened.
And so I knew that what I wrote in that journal would have to be
in really good handwriting and, like, really important.
Stuart was a boy, Stuart W.
I don't know why I have to say "W,"
because he was the only Stuart I knew.
He wore, like, oversized T-shirts and baggy shorts
that went below his knees
and had this kind of grungy attitude.
I don't think he skateboarded, but he could have skateboarded.
The first time I met Stuart was not an accident.
He and his brother were, like,
walking through the neighborhood.
So I took my unicycle and just kind of,
like, casually unicycled around the neighborhood.
? Come to me, my love. ?
? Let me swing forevermore. ?
-He was like, "Hey."
"Hey."
After that, we were fast friends.
I remember we used to, like, put his little brother
up against a brick wall
and, like, throw tennis balls at him, water-balloon fights.
And we used to stash Victoria Secret magazines in the bushes.
I didn't realize, like, I was in the friend zone.
I was like, "Yeah, we're gonna look at Victoria Magazines
'cause that's what he wants to do and I support him."
That was the year that we kind of, like,
diagnosed my mom with alcoholism.
It was really bad.
Honestly, when I think about that time,
I just have, like, a visual of my mom,
like, lying on the floor,
and then just, like, you know, whenever I found her like that,
I would just go and check to make sure she was alive.
And that's kind of, like, all I cared about.
Like, "Is she alive?"
Okay, like, get on with my day.
I just remember being a kid
and knowing that people forgot stuff.
Like, I knew that as an adult,
I would forget the things that happened to me when I was a kid.
And I wanted to remember this childhood that I didn't have,
so I just started reimagining these stories with Stuart,
and I wrote them down in my journal.
Stuart W kissed me for five seconds today.
Stuart showed me his snakes today.
Stuart said he wants to run away with me.
Stuart wants to take me out of my house.
It was never like,
"Stuart wishes that you had enough health insurance
to send your mom to a rehab facility."
'Cause at the time,
I don't think I really thought about it in those terms.
I just thought of, like, "I just want to get out of here."
-One, two, three -- -Kissing a boy for five seconds
was, like, a more normal childhood
than what I was going through.
I don't know how I knew it wasn't normal anymore,
but at some point I knew that my mom wasn't normal anymore.
I knew I wanted to remember something else.