EVERYONE needs a dream to keep their life moving forwards.

If you ask 33-year-old Connel Coetzee, he will tell you this is the key to not giving in to your darkest thoughts.

Connel, from Colchester, found himself at a crossroads when he was a teenager.

Having lost both his parents at an early age, his dad to a car crash and his mother to cancer, he found himself standing on a bridge staring down at the traffic below.

“I had a new acoustic guitar,” he said.

“I looked down at the passing cars and looked at my guitar, which was lying on the floor beside me, and I made my choice.”

Playing music saved Connel’s life and his determination to keep living paid off.

Although he has yet to be signed, his persistence in pursuing his dream as a musician is working.

Connel was delighted to hear his acoustic track Best Friend played by BBC Essex earlier this month.

Born and raised in South Africa, he was six years old and living in the city of Durban when two police officers knocked on his door.

“I can still remember when they told my mother my dad had died in a car crash,” he said.

“I saw my mother put her hands over her mouth and then she collapsed to the floor, letting out this painful scream which I will never forget.

“My mother did her best to raise my sister and I, but struggled. I would often hear her cry when she thought we were asleep.”

In the years that followed his father’s death, Connel remembers witnessing his mother suffer domestic abuse.

He ran away from home and one day, while at school, he was stopped in the corridor by the principal and a social worker.

They told him he was to be taken into care.

On his first day living in a children’s home, he saw an old acoustic guitar lying on a toy box.

“I picked it up and although at the time I couldn’t play, I carried it everywhere with me,” he said.

“I ran away many times from the children’s home with my guitar, playing it on the beach or in a field – it was a good escape.”

When Connel reached his teens, his uncle moved him from South Africa to England.

Living in Hounslow, London, he spent six months training to join the British Army at the age of 16.

“I was often kicked out of the house and one day I never went back,” he said.

With no family to turn to, Connel reached a low point in his life, sofa surfing and briefly living in a hostel.

Turning to music rescued him when he stood atop the bridge, and it rescued him again when he applied for a Sound Engineering course at a London college.

He said: “I had to do an interview, but I didn’t have enough grades to do the course.

“But I managed to impress the tutor enough with my guitar playing and I got into college.”

From then on, Connel worked in insurance and as a fraud investigator for a law firm.

He had a son, Riley, who is now aged nine, and lives in Colchester to be near him.

He was once unsuccessful in sending his music to the BBC and his dream to become a star had fallen by the wayside.

But he tried again, focusing on a stripped back and simple acoustic sound.

His track was played during a BBC Music Introducing in Essex segment.

He hopes his story will help people who feel, wrongly, that they have no worth.

“You have to dream, have something to aim for,” he said.

“You may be kicked more times than not, but you have to pick yourself back up.

“I had this old busted guitar, with four strings on it, and it always helped me. If I was upset or felt hopeless it was what I would turn to.

“Some days I felt depressed and then I picked up the guitar and started feeling better.

“Simplicity works, with my music I took all that fancy stuff out and made it just me and my guitar, singing. It worked for me throughout my life and it worked for getting my music noticed.”

“Life is hard, but does pay off when you are true to yourself and follow your dreams.

“Life is precious. If my past experience helps one person out there who might be struggling with aspects of their mental health find some sort of hope, then it’s worth it.”