Justin Heazlewood

Well, the whole thing kind of ground to a halt.

And my soul was like going, hey, so how are we doing?

The answers weren't great.

And you'd wake up at 4am and stare off into the great void of the universe and be like, hey, how are we going, though?

You know?

And the answer would be, hmm, you know what?

I think we're in a little bit of trouble and I just had a breakdown and I went to ground in many different ways.

And it coincided with the waters breaking on my childhood memoir, which, you know, I'd known my whole life I would eventually write about.

My shopping list would say milk, eggs, bread, write childhood memoir, drop off laundry, stuff like that.

So I guess I began this creative breakdown therapy bomb side of my life where I was just by myself a lot with low energy, light sensitive, noise sensitive stuff.

Not really able to function in the world other than to start offloading this compounded grief of my childhood, which had just built up like layers of sediment.

It's like 90% therapy, 10% entertainment.

zero percent income like that's why I do this look I'm trying to make something be awesome trying to make it fun and I was trying to do the really hard scenes as well my entire childhood hinges on me ringing man and pop-up midweek and saying I can't handle mum's crying can you please come and get me

which is what would happen sometimes.

I had to pay a lot of attention to what happened in those conversations and what was the voice on the other end of the line saying.

And did Nan and Pop come and get me?

They didn't.

And, yeah, the obvious question is probably why.

Yeah, so I like to do a very... I like to do a wacky, ambitious book launch.

You know, because everything's so heavy with mental illness and as soon as you start talking about it, you can feel the weight in the room grow.