Erin wants nothing more than to be seen and loved, but she’s trapped in a cage of her own shyness. Set in the underbelly of the suburbs of Vancouver in the early 2000s, young Erin develops a confusing and intense crush on a female classmate, sparking desperate bids for attention and setting Erin on a dangerous path in search of fulfilment. When that path leads to hard drugs and the illusion of security and love, there’s no turning back.

Anchored by her boyfriend-turned-best-friend and a chorus of pierced, punk friends, Erin lives and loves on the outskirts of real consequence as her world gets smaller and darker. Eventually clawing her way out of the dark depths of rock bottom through running, she finds herself still trapped in cycles of addiction. It’s only when consequence eventually hits—and hits hard—that she meets both grief and herself. There, she finally sees everything she’s been trying to escape in new light, and her transformation begins.

Erin Steele is a writer, low-key philosopher and insatiably curious explorer of life. She writes On Being Human on Substack, is a 2022 Writing by Writers fellow and has been published in Human Parts by Medium. She currently lives in Kelowna, BC, Canada where she practises all limbs of yoga, runs long distances on trails and nerds out on nature—particularly when the arrowleaf balsamroot explodes the hills yellow.

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