I mean, you gotta remember, like, I was fifteen, you know? My dad was acting like we were equals, and it’s like, yeah, okay, I mean, we had a professional relationship, but also, like: I was a teenager. That’s the age when everyone hurts their parents. That’s the age when everyone does kind of fucked-up, inconsiderate shit. But because of the position I was in, and because of the relationship we had, my fucked-up inconsiderate decisions had real effects on my dad’s sense of self-worth, and that was honestly more than I was equipped to deal with at that point.

I mean, this is all shit I understand now, like, this is all shit I can talk about with a clear head now, but at the time, I was just really shitty about it, and I handled things maybe in a way that didn’t help the situation. My dad was really shitty too, no doubt about it, but like, I said some really hurtful, like, really inconsiderate shit, and so I’m not saying for a second that the whole fallout was his fault. It was a two-way street, one hundred percent.

The worst it got was when I went over to my parents’ house for dinner a few weeks after the song dropped, and it all kind of came to a head.

At that point, I was living on my own. My house was still in my parents’ name, because like, no one will rent a house to a fifteen-year-old, but I had my own place a few minutes from theirs that was totally mine to do what I wanted with, and so for all intents and purposes, I was independent. But we still had a tradition where every Sunday night, I’d go over to their place for dinner and we’d all like, be a family together. We wouldn’t have a chef or anything, and my mom would just cook, and we’d help her, and we’d like, bake some cookies and just try to be normal, do normal shit.

And so a few Sundays after the song came out, I went over to their place for dinner, and I was in the middle of helping my mom make a chicken potpie when my dad came down the stairs and was just like: Here you go.

And I looked at his hands, and he was holding this piece of paper, and at the top of it, it said “Separation Agreement.” And I looked at it, and I was like: What the fuck, Dad? What is this? And he was like: You don’t trust my judgment, you don’t communicate with me, we can’t work together anymore. And I was like: Why are you being like this? And he was like: I thought we were doing this thing together. I thought we were a team. And I was like: You’re my dad! You’re my manager! And he was like: If you’re gonna treat me like I don’t have anything to contribute, you might as well get a different manager. And I was like: Dad … And he was like: And maybe get a different dad while you’re at it.