Written on 7 July 2019
From her 8th birthday till her 18th, Steve would tell his daughter how awful life was. Every day if he could.
Sometimes he would sit her down, and say something like “You know that the world is a terrible place, everything dies and that life is pointless, right?” and at first this upset her, but after a while she evidently realised it was important for her Dad to tell her these things.
Later on, he would do it over the phone, text message, email, Facebook and, most recently, WhatsApp. Always a similar message. Always telling her that living was hard and inevitably people will let her down.
And every time he did it, Steve put away a £5 note. Over those 10 years he collected over 15 grand.
And on her 18th birthday, he promised to stop telling her how horrible life was. And he gave her the money.
“For therapy, or whatever.”