Maybe not for the dash, but why did you fall off a cliff after the house fire? I have zero background/experience with something like that, so if it's really bad just ignore.

Oh, I’ll answer on the dash. No problem.

After the fire (which was my fault), I saw what it did to my parents, to my siblings, and I just carried that weight for a long long time. Basically, I did something that fucked everything up for my entire family. And I’ve always had the disposition that makes me assume fault in any situation. So you can imagine how that went. Especially when it was 150% my fault.

I had never seen my Father cry, but while the firemen were breaking out the windows on our house with their pikes and he was sitting on the curb crying his eyes out, I died a little. When I saw my brother and sister just staring at the house, I died some more.

The first thing my Mother said to me was “You’ve done dumber things. I’ve left the stove on before too. You just got caught.” In the years since, not only is that a summarization of my whole life, those were the words that I clung to when I thought about it. Look, I burned my family’s house down.

I made light about it. I had jokes involving “my meth lab blowing up” and how “my HOTT GUITAR LIXX were just too HOTT” and whatever, but that was using humor to mask the pain. I didn’t let myself really assess the situation until about 2011.

Before that, it was a black hole. The fire left a hole in my whole family. As a whole and individually. I tried to fill mine with booze, pills, cocaine, whatever made me feel (or not feel) something. I was on the run. It broke the family up for a while. Dad slept in the house as soon as he could. He lived in that basement where I learned to play rock ‘n roll. On a couch with an end table and my sister’s TV. My brother stayed with friends. My Mom and my sister and I went to my Grandparents’ house. After a while, I started staying wherever I could.

Before the fire, I had been living in a flophouse with a bunch of people I knew from high school. I had gotten into drugs pretty bad, and when I realized it was a problem (thanks to my parents’ upbringing. even though they had no idea about what i was doing or any idea about the drugs i was on, i knew when it was time to go home), i went back to their house.

I heard whispers that I was fucked up when I burned the house down. That’s not true. I just forgot what I was doing and that’s that.

But after the fire, I went and lived with those people again. I started doing coke like it was my job. I was suspended in a solution of Jack and Hamm’s and just refusing to let myself process the situation. I had burned my parents’ house down. The first house they had the money to buy. Their dream. And I fucked that up. Because I forgot I was cooking.

My Mother has never blamed me. I think my Dad did for a while, but he never took it out on me. Emma has understood more than anyone ever will. But it created a rift between me and my brother for a long time.

Mom told everyone not to blame me. Not to call me out on it. Eröl did that once. I ended up punching him in the face and he had to get stitches. I feel really bad about that. I only hit him because I wanted the satisfaction. He was a senior and playing hockey all the time, so I figured I would hit him and then he would destroy me. I never realize how strong playing drums has made me. So I smacked him, used my left hand because I’m a lefty, connected with his right eyebrow, and he went down. But here’s the thing.

I wanted him to hit me. I wanted to get beaten up for what I had done. I even told my Dad while he was crying on the curb that he could hit me if he wanted. I straight told him that he could punch me in the face.

And when nobody would call me on what I had done, or physically hurt me for it, I decided to hurt myself. I started taking anything that anyone handed me. I drank from the time I woke up until the time I passed out. I started getting drunk at parties and then I would start fights, just to hit someone.

I still haven’t confronted it as far as songwriting goes, but I might in time. It was a huge financial burden on my parents. We ended up moving out of that house in September 2011. I personally kicked a few holes in the wall myself, just for some fucked-up kind of closure. I put cigarettes out on countertops.

I miss that basement. I miss where I learned to play drums and guitar and write songs and record music and learned what makes me “me.”

Sometimes when I drink at my friends’ house in Byron, and when I leave before I get too drunk, I drive by the house on my way home. It’s out of my way, but I do it anyway.

I still don’t think I’m okay with it, but it changed me. It changed my family. I tried to kill myself by self-harm and pugilism and drinking and snorting cocaine until I threw up, and trying some kind of “suicide by circumstances.”

That’s why I moved to Nashville in 2008. I had to get out. I had to get away from it.

I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, but it’s like my Mom said. “You’ve done dumber things. I’ve left the stove on before too. You just got caught.”

I still don’t know what I’ve done that’s dumber than that, but I believe her. Because she’s my Mom.