'Sudden wealth puts you in a cocoon; it makes you feel invincible. I thought I was Superman'
When I was three, my father left home and I lived with my mother in a suburb of Toronto. She knew nothing about raising a child; she could barely look after herself – she would dress me in the cheapest clothes imaginable and my shoes were so ill-fitting it would hurt to run; every day it was agony just walking to school. And if I wanted any toys, I had to save up from what I earned on my paper route and buy them for myself. I was the school freak, tormented by the other kids.
My mother also suffered extreme mood swings. Periods of calm were few and far between, and often the scariest, because they heralded the storm I knew was coming. At 15, I ran away. I returned home several times afterwards, in the hope that things would change, but they never did and eventually I left permanently, splitting my time between youth hostels and the streets.
I was 18 when everything did change. Out of the blue I got a call from one of my mother's oldest friends. She got straight to the point: "Your mother's dead, Alex," she said. My mother had committed suicide. She was 51.
I cried uncontrollably at the funeral, yet my grief was matched by a sense of liberation and relief: in a way, the nightmare was over.
