JOEY
WHILE THE REST of my family and friends were enjoying their summer, I was spending mine inside a mental health facility, with doctors who tried to undo the damage already done to my fucked-up brain.
Every day it was something.
Every damn day, there was a new topic to broach.
If the doctors and therapists weren’t probing my feelings towards my father, then they were forcing me to speak about the death of my mother or dissecting my relationship with my girlfriend.
Christ, even Granda Murphy had been dragged up in conversation. Nanny, too. Nothing was sacred to these people. Every inch of my life, from birth to present day, was as enticing to them as drugs were to me.
The worst was when they asked me how I felt about my mother’s passing.
Passing.
Like she passed off somewhere.
I hated that world.
Mam didn’t pass away.
She was taken.
Fucking stolen.
And I blamed her.
I spent my life hating on her, blaming her for things I couldn’t understand at the time.
I didn’t get it.
Still couldn’t.
But she was my mother, and she died thinking I hated her. That would never sit well with me, and nothing these doctors could say would repair that hole in me.
Nothing.
Thinking clearly for the first time in several years, I faced my demons with a loaded conscience and a crushed heart.
The stupid fucking journal I’d been encouraged to keep in hospital felt unbearably heavy in my hands, filled with more darkness than I knew what to do with.
Trusting wasn’t something that came easily to me, not even when it came to writing in a fucking journal.
Hating, on the other hand, did.
I excelled at hating the world.
Not just the world, but everyone in it.
Except for her.
Yeah, she was my only exception.
