April 3, 2005
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I read a book today. It made me think:
It was about a young girl who lived in a Christian home. Her parents were involved in church in every way. She felt like she was evil because her mother told her all the evil thoughts that go through the minds of those going to Hell. Her older brother would physically abuse her and her sister when their parents weren’t home. When she was 12, she started drinking. Then she started smoking pot. She did so many drugs when she was 14 and in ninth grade that she got kicked out of school. She was dating this boozer at the time, who introduced her to this other junkie. She decides she’s going to leave her boyfriend. She has plans to hang with some other friends later that day. Her boyfriend was physically abusive and when she told him that she was leaving him, he went beserk. He eventually ended up cracking her skull by slamming her head into the side of his stucco house. She blacks out and wakes up to find him crying and hugging her on his front stoop. Her friends show up and get her away from him. She starts hanging with this junkie guy her ex had introduced her to. She starts doing lines of cocaine and smoking crack and doing acid. Her life is nothing. She blacks out a lot and doesnt remember huge chunks of her days. She gets into a lot of trouble with the law and is a very violent, angry young woman. She’s so thin from drugs and she never eats or sleeps because the drugs keep her awake. She’s ordered to go to treatment. She refuses to go along with the program and is percived as cold and aloof. She gets out and starts using again. But it’s not the same after not being high for 3 or 4 weeks. She stumbles along in life and gets into more and more trouble, in and out of treamtment. She latches onto the director or something of this one place and she trusts him like she trusts no one else. It’s brought up that maybe her father sexually abused her when she was younger. She refuses to believe it at first, but then after a long time, she realizes that it’s true. She relapses many times before she finally stops. She moved away from where she lives and started over.
It was a very hard book to read. It was very powerful. I would recomend it to everyone to read, if I could only remember what it’s called. When I was finished, I became very depressed. I thought about myself and about my mother. I tried to figure out why I can’t remember most of my childhood. I have random memories, and most of them are bad. Was it really so bad that I can’t remember it? What happened to me that was so traumatic for all those years? I finally understood why people can’t stop using and why it’s so easy for them to go back to it. I thought about my mother and how I want to help her. If I send her to treatment, she’ll be very angry with me. Drugs and alcohol are her release. I want her to stop all that and be a real mother. She probably will never talk to me again. I can say that I don’t care, but in reality, I do.
