Written to My Way Home is Through You by My Chemical Romance, dedicated to the MCR era of August 2004-February 2010.

My Way Home is Through You, Though So Was the Way Out

Alright then.

My parents had what they wanted. I was going to be okay, I would survive the streets and the cold and germs, another kid crawling the pavements, a member of the homeless brigade. I could live on my own - under bridges, on park benches, up a tree, switchblade in one hand with an eye always open. If they couldn't be bothered with me, I couldn't be bothered with them.

No more attempts to conform to my school or family rules, no more falling over myself to take my painkillers like a good little child, absolutely no more whispers down the corridors about the sick kid on medication. None. I hoped they cried at my funeral… with guilt. Or at least remembered me for throwing French dictionaries at them when they called me 'spaccy' one time too many.

Of course, it was harder than I'd thought it would, being homeless. I couldn't turn the heating up or make some coffee or check my email. I was totally isolated, only reading the news from discarded newspapers or from gossiping passers-by as they boarded the tube to work every morning. Ladies in public toilets gave me weird looks when they saw me cleaning my teeth in the sink.

I refused to consider returning home, though. There were no 'missing' posters on trees or letterboxes, no headlines about a runaway teenager. I had discovered that runaway teenagers were all too common nowadays to be considered worth searching for.

I still got a twinge in my stomach, though, a faint longing to slip up the alleyway behind the flats and peek through the windows, to check how they were doing… if they missed me.

The risk of them seeing me was too great, however. We hadn't parted on good terms, they probably didn't want to know where I'd ended up; if anyone had twigged I'd left in the first place. On the off-chance words were exchanged, I knew they'd be blatant and ugly.

Two months after I'd upped and departed middle-class living, I relented. I visited just once, to make sure they were alive and if the damp hadn't ruined the ceilings too much.

My empty stomach fell sixty floors as I had flashbacks of the previous year: admiration to the point of stalking, hours gathered round the kitchen table playing blackjack and sneaking eye contact over the cards.

I couldn't help but be disappointed when I saw nothing had changed; there was still a flickering light switch threatening to fall from the crumbling plaster, broken chairs stacked next to a Red Cross calendar. Had they genuinely not been bothered that I might be at the bottom of the river with a bullet in my back or hanging from train station rafters with a rope around my neck? I'd always thought one of them, at least, would try to help me up if I was discovered in a side road lying in bloodstains next to a rusty kitchen knife.

Oh well.

I was brave; I'd made it this far and the cons outweighed the pros. One more day of media coverage on reality TV and gossip surrounding a political particle of air would've been enough for me to seek out the train station rafters and a rope myself. I could breathe on the smoggy streets.

Six months later, I was considering the rope option again. I could smell spring mixed in with exhaust fumes, warmth next to my frostbitten limbs. But I'd had enough. I couldn't survive on my own outside any more than I could on the inside, surrounded by people. I awoke with the realisation I had no idea what to do. I was tired of keeping an eye out for drug dealers, skirting around brothels to avoid being mistaken for someone who worked in one.

But there he was. Sitting on the end of the bench I'd curled up on, watching me with the same bright interest he gave everything, calculating my next thought before I knew it myself. That's when I knew what I needed to say.

"I'm sorry."