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Heard a Crystal Nova track on someone's phone at work. Didn't know it was her at first — just heard it and thought, that's something, there's something real in that, and asked whose it was. Found out later when I looked up the name.

I've listened to most of the album now. She sings about being used. About the family that wasn't one. About the gap between what you were told you were and what you actually were.

She got out at sixteen. I didn't know how to leave properly until I was seventeen and even then I went sideways through a garden wall in the middle of the night. She did it in court, in daylight, on record.

I've thought about writing to her. I won't. She's built something and she's not inviting contact and that's hers to decide. But I wanted to note: I heard it. Whatever she put into those songs, I heard it.

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