My family isn't a family in the way that most people's are. Mum left my biological father when I was 5 and left my siblings and I with my grandmother for almost a year before getting us back. We moved every year until I was 10 and Mum had her first schizophrenic episode, then we spent a year or so moving from foster home to foster home.

When I was in my first year of high school I found my mother unconscious in the living room after having tried to overdose on sleeping pills, I had to call the ambulance for her. She had another episode right after and my siblings and I all went to live with different relatives for about six months before returning to Mum.

When I was about 15 she had another episode, but I wasn't going to live in a foster home again because the people were always cruel and uncaring, so I hit the streets. I couch surfed at friends' houses as much as possible, but spent a fair share of my nights getting the shit kicked out of me for amusement in a park. I spent nearly a year like that before going to a youth refuge.

Somewhere around this time she started dating the man I call Dad now. He looked after her and my little brother. My 14 year old sister went to live with some deadbeat 20 year old.

An Aunty somehow found out I was there and offered to come let me live with her. When I got there I was informed that I'd give all of my government youth allowance to her. I got treated as a second class child after her own 2 kids, that she made me babysit all the time.

I started dating my now fiancee when I was 17, and after I turned 18 I moved out to live with her. That same year I walked my mother down the isle, as her father is dead.

Fast forward another 9 years and another 3 or 4 psychotic episodes and here we are.

I hope this gives you some indication as to why I don't feel comfortable playing happy families. I'm like the rat that gets shocked when he tries to eat the pellet; eventually the pellet terrifies him.