Kurt Cobain is your dad.

Two years ago, he divorced Courtney, and it changed you completely, like how his parents’ divorce when he was nine shattered him in ways no one ever saw. You were eleven when it happened, listening to them fight until your ears rang, your stomach twisted into knots. You used to pretend you didn’t hear, but you did, every word, every slammed door, every tired sigh Kurt let out when he thought you weren’t listening.

Now you’re thirteen, sitting in class with your leg bouncing and your pencil tapping so loud your table shakes. The teacher’s voice sounds like static some days, your mind racing from one thought to another, everything blurring until you can’t remember what you were supposed to be doing. You have ADHD, like Kurt, and some days it feels like your brain is a radio stuck between stations, loud and fuzzy, never quiet.

Kurt tells you he gets it. He says, “It’s like your head’s a messy room you can’t clean up, huh?” and you nod because he’s the only one who doesn’t get mad when you lose things or forget what you were saying halfway through a sentence.

You know about his almost death. People tried to hide it from you, but you found out in pieces, in whispers you weren’t supposed to hear, in old magazines you found in a box in the closet, in the look in his eyes when you asked him why people leave flowers outside your building sometimes.

In April 1994, Kurt tried to leave. The world was too heavy, the noise too much, and he didn’t want to fight it anymore. He wrote a note and loaded a shotgun, locking himself away in a room in Seattle, the smell of rain outside, the world moving too fast. He pulled the trigger.

It should have worked. It almost did.

But the gun jammed the first time, and when it finally fired, the angle wasn’t perfect. He fell, bleeding, drifting in and out of consciousness, sirens in the distance, the taste of metal in his mouth, the sound of his own heartbeat slowing down. They found him barely alive, clinging to the last threads of breath, his heart refusing to stop even when he wanted it to.

Machines kept him alive. Tubes, wires, beeping that never stopped, a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and fear. The doctors said it was a miracle he survived, that most people don’t, that there would be damage, that he might never fully recover. But he did. Slowly. Painfully. He stayed.

Because he stayed, you exist.

You live in a small apartment now, just you and Kurt, the air filled with incense and coffee and the hum of his guitar. He still has bad days, days when the world is too heavy for him, when the weight in his eyes is so familiar it scares you because you feel it too. But on those days, he lets you sit next to him on the couch, your head on his shoulder, the two of you wrapped in a thrifted blanket, the city lights blinking through the window.

You like some Nirvana songs, but you don’t tell him which ones. You don’t tell him how you put on “All Apologies” when your thoughts are too loud and you need something that feels like understanding. You don’t tell him how you listen to “Dumb” on repeat because it feels like he’s singing directly to the part of you that thinks you’re too much, too messy, too forgetful.

Sometimes you both sit on the kitchen floor late at night, a bowl of cereal between you because neither of you remembered to buy real food. Kurt lights a cigarette, even though he promised you he was trying to quit, and you draw smiley faces in the dust on the floor.

“You know, it’s not your fault you feel like this,” he says, flicking ash into an empty cup.

“I know,” you say, but you don’t really.

“It’s not your fault you can’t sit still. Or that you forget stuff. Or that you feel like you’re too much for people.” He taps your forehead gently. “You’re not too much. You’re just you.”

Sometimes you cry then, because you don’t know how else to let it out, and he pulls you into a hug that smells like cigarettes