YOU GRIEVE AND YOU GRIEVE and you grieve, and at some point you wonder if the grief will ever run out, but you quickly realize that there is a limitless supply of grief. It is there when you reach for it. It is there when you don’t reach for it. It can seep between the cracks of any wall you put up. It can invade even the happiest of thoughts. It can even hijack your dreams. Grief can find you no matter where you are, no matter how far you’ve traveled.

I’m in the backstage hallway, heading over to the greenroom to see what food they have tucked away in there. The food situation in my dressing room is less than ideal. I’ve been greeted at just about every one of these speaking engagements with the same unappealing platter of sliced veggies and hummus. I’ve had it up to here with hummus. I am thinking that: I’ve had it up to here with hummus. And then very quickly, I am thinking, You have no right to complain about any of this. You have been living in an alternate world ever since Christopher died. This is not reality. Reality died at the water tower. This is the progression of pretty much every thought I have.

Look at me, in this new, altered reality. I am the pretty (after hours of hair, makeup, and Instagram filters) gay boy whose boyfriend killed himself because of his homophobic preacher parents. I am the beautiful victim and the world loves me for it.

Or at least that’s the story I’m selling.

Just a week before I came to New York to accept this award, Harrison called with even more “big news”: I’d sold a book about my experience. A book that would be published as a memoir but was actually fiction. The book advance I was being offered would save the house my father’s book-advance gamble had lost.

This is what my life has become. All because Christopher’s life will never become anything other than what it was.

I didn’t do any of this for money.

I did it because of what happened right after he died. I did it to prevent the real Christopher from becoming entirely erased.

I must remember that, but everyone around me is making it harder and harder to do so.

When I get to the greenroom, I am immediately greeted by Janice Atwood, the executive director of the LGBTQ Society of America, which exists to promote LGBTQ positivity, especially for those under parental disapproval and family scorn. Janice is a lovely woman who left her mega-important CEO job at some Silicon Valley start-up to devote her life to helping others. She’s got these long blonde-and-black dreadlocks that hang down to her butt and she’s maybe the coolest and calmest human being I’ve ever met. She has no idea she’s backing a fraud.

“Hey, mister,” she says the minute I walk through the door frame. She’s filling a little paper plate with yogurt-covered pretzels.

“Hi,” I say, nervous. Janice always puts me on edge. I guess it’s because it’s intimidating to be around someone who has devoted her life to good.

“Get this! The silent auction raised close to half a million dollars tonight!” she says in a voice that gets an octave higher on every word. “And we haven’t even closed the bidding on some of the big prizes. You should feel proud to have been a large part of that, my friend.”

“Yeah.” This is the most I can come up with. I don’t feel proud. I can’t, even though I know in some small and moderately screwed-up way, I have helped.

“Hey … I know all of this has been a lot, buddy.” She stares deeply into my eyes, the way only a truly good human being can. “But you better remember that Christopher is somewhere up there, and he’s so damn proud of you.”

“Thank you,” I say, turning to leave the room.

I’ve officially lost my appetite.