Red Opium.

Mom called this afternoon, and she was actually really pleasant. Her initial reason was to ask me to call Aunt Sandi for her because her phone card had run out. Apparently Sandi had called earlier in the week, and Mom's not able to call her back. The whole conversation was actually pretty good. There was no mention made of the car, or why she can't find a key, no mention of Johnny either. We talked about R-MWC's BoT vote, and just chit-chatted for about twenty minutes or so. She even said "I love you" at the end of the phone call, and I'm not sure that she said that to me the last week I was home.

It's hard. It's almost better for me when she acts like a bitch, because then I feel like I have a reason to feel the way that I do. But when she acts like she did today, when she acts like my mother....it hurts. It really hurts.

That one phone call broke my heart today. That was my mother talking to me today, not this crazy, self-centered, cold woman that I lived with all summer long. That was the mother that I remember tucking me in at night when I was little, the woman that I remember taking us to the school's playground when she got home from work during the summer. I remember that woman putting a cold washcloth on my head when I was sick, and laughing so loudly when we would go to the beach in the summertime, watching my sister and I run into the waves and then scatter back out as they broke at the shoreline.

My mother's still there, I heard her today. Not just heard - I felt her today. And yet, I still know in the back of my mind and in the bottom of my heart that this woman is also the cold woman that I lived with last summer too. I hate that woman but I love my mother. I don't want to go back to that woman, but I want my mommy so bad. I don't know whether to hate her or to love her. For some reason, I can't do both. I can't hate what's bad about her and love what I remember anymore. I can't do the schizophrenic love/hate thing anymore. I just can't.

I feel like someone's literally broken my heart. Maybe that's what hurts the most.


And on top of everything else, I just feel so removed. From God, especially. It felt indescribibly horrible to sit there through mass and not feel anything, listening to Father and watching the people sitting near me smile and nod knowingly. And I felt nothing. I don't feel God in my life, I don't even find myself thinking of Him at any point during the day anymore. If I go to church or I'm around people from CCM or even people that I know are Catholic, I feel so horrible. I feel like a horrible person because I DON'T feel anything, because I DON'T think about Him, because I DON'T pray or hear Him or even ask Him for anything anymore. To be honest, sometimes I don't even see the point. And it seems like no matter what I do or how hard I pray, nothing seems to be coming to light.



This could prove to have a disastrous effect on my recovery. I'm doing my best to make sure that it won't, though.


Sorry this is so long.

-Ash
A million stars look on in witness to our dreams -Thrice