My name is Christine Miles Fazer. My mother's name is Jal Fazer. My father's name is Chris Miles. I guess you can see how I got my name. To my mother, my name is a constant reminder of her indescribable loss, known as death. My mother told me how he died when I was 14. A subarachnoid haemorrhage. Just like his Brother, my Uncle.

I was too purely exposed to sadness at too of an early age. It was like a nuclear gas, drifting in my lungs and silently sucking the life out of me. I guess that's how my mother felt too. Sadness was the ever-constant bass droning at the back of a song. It was our song.

However, I was given everything. My mother had made it as a musician, she played in world class orchestra's for world class celebrities. Music was probably our best saviour. So we had a lot of money. A big house, a posh school, anything I wanted I could have. But I only really desired one thing, my father.

On my 18th Birthday, as well as mound of expensive presents, my mother handed me a small piece of paper.

"When your father died, we weren't aloud to go to the funeral. Sid and Tony even nicked the casket so we could say goodbye. They did return the casket, and we had our own ceremony on the hill above the graveyard. And then, on the hill, I made speech about Chris. I wrote it down afterwards, so I could always remember why I loved him. This is that speech. Happy Birthday sweetie."

Like a wall of bricks, tears built up in our eyes. I hugged her, with my walls falling down. My mum had cried so many times about this she could draw back the tears. I was resentful towards reading it, but also itching with anticipation. After dinner, I ran up to my room and carefully opened the little package of words my mother had written before I was born. It read:

"I've been thinking about what Chris would have wanted me to say today. The advice he'd give me, which'd be something like, 'Know what, babe? Fuck it. These guys know all about me. Tell them about someone different.' So I thought I'd tell you about a hero of Chris's: a man called Captain Joe Kittinger. In 1960, climbing into a foil balloon, Captain Joe ascended 32 kilometres into the stratosphere. And then, armed only with a parachute, he jumped out. He fell for four minutes and thirty-six seconds, reaching seven hundred and forty miles per hour before opening his parachute five kilometres above the Earth. It had never been done before, and it's never been done since. He did it just because he could. And that's why Chris loved him - because the thing about Chris was, he said yes. He said yes to everything. He loved everyone. And he was the bravest boy - man - I knew. And that was - he flung himself out of a foil balloon every day. Because he could. Because he was. And that's why - and that's why,...we, we loved him."

In which the next hour was a wave of tears and hopeless prayers wishing my father was by my side.

A couple of days later, me and my mother visited Michelle's flat, my mother's friend that has been for a long time.

Michelle's flat was a labyrinth of stories hidden in objects, one of which being an old watch, sleeping on the mantelpiece. It had a tiny crack in the glass, I traced my fingers around the metal and inquired to myself why a watch would be so importantly placed on the mantelpiece of important things.

Michelle was petite but feisty. Her curly mars bar-coloured hair spilt down to the shoulders of her pink cardigan. She always has a smile on face. A welcoming fence of pearls protected by cushions chapped skin. Her husband described it as "the gooey sunset peaking through future kisses.".

Michelle had a hunky symmetrical husband she met at university. His face was ageless, not a grey hair nor wrinkle. At a first look, their marriage looked like a vain and hollow mistake. I was surprised to see the overwhelming compatibility of the two. It's weird to think Michelle used to date Tony, another one of my mother many friends she'd still kept close with.

Tony was the fire to everybody's ice. I usually sit quietly and analyse the life and personality of the Tony Stonem, the reason of many heartbreaks and drama, judging by my mother's stories.

I'm impressed by how much he looks like the photos from years before, almost like his face had been carefully preserved. "Some things never change." my mother laughed as she stepped in Tony's tiny house. Tony was the kind of person to have collages of photos inked with the faces of his friends. Quite a few photos contained my father, young and 9 out of 10 times likely to have had some kind of pill. Tony smiled, "Great man, your Dad. I bet he's proud of how far you two have got. His smile is probably lighting up the sky somewhere.". I smiled and hugged my 'uncle' Tony. He always knew the right words to say, even if they ended up biting him back in the arse.

The constant meeting of my mother's friends made me think about myself, and how I'm indescribably different from my parents. I'm the one who eats their lunch alone on the bench at school. The one that supresses any act of being myself to make everyone content. I guess, inside, my personality could rebel into a drug-taking, sex-having, risk-taking trouble maker with my own group of friends. That's the dream, anyway. But, right now, I can't seem to unlock the gate to myself. So wrapped up in looking at other people's lives I hardly have my own.

That's why I'm excited for university, a chance to either find that key jump over the gate.