Ezra | Fitzroy, Taranaki

** This story mentions abuse and suicide.  Youthline provides free support for young people, or people supporting young people. Contact 0800 376 633 or free text 234 **

“I don’t know whether or not it was a time to be brave, but it was a time to make a decision, and the decision was whether or not I lived or died, and the brave decision was that I decided to stay. After everything that I’d been through, the years of abuse and everything like that, just to be brave, and to still be here today, I think that that’s my brave story.

Everything was going good. I was doing really well at school. I was just the average Joe that people knew me as, and one night I decided that it was too much, that I just didn’t want any of that anymore. I didn’t want the accolades for things that were so small. Like, oh Ezra helped out, put away some chairs. 

I grew up in Wellington. I grew up as a Child, Youth and Family kid. So that’s always kind of been a label that’s been stuck over my life. I have really, really struggled to try and throw that label off, but it’s one that just kind of sticks and it stays there. It made my life really difficult, just moving from house to house, and not actually understanding what home means. So, when people ask that question, where’s home, it’s almost like saying, what is the key to the universe. I don’t know. I moved here two years ago, and fell in love with the place, but now I’m making a decision on whether I stay, or leave Taranaki. I would love for my whole story to be shared from start to finish, all the gory details, all the little secrets that I learned in life along the way. I would really love my whole entire story to be shared. It would probably take a little while to share, and it’s definitely not for all viewers and listeners.

So, my hopes for the future are obviously to be in a different place to where I’m at now. I’m currently homeless, but I’m not. I have a roof over my head at night, but to move out of that kind of area, that would be nice, to be an actor or to just entertain people. I think that would be real cool, or just to even get my story out there. So, in my whole experience of life, with all the knowledge that I have, the one thing that I’d share with anyone is, find out who you are, and stick to that, don’t care about what anyone else is saying, whether they’re saying go up, go down, go left, go right, because the fact of the matter is, that if they tell you to jump off a bridge, and you do it, they’re not going to suffer the consequences. So, I think that’s the key. Just be you, and everything else. I assume that it will all work out for its good.”