Blonde Ivory

Number Twenty-Seven: h.m.s.

Hayden Sterling

Diary Entry #7

Date: December 30th

Good day, Journal, how art thou? I'm feeling quite well considering the circumstances. What circumstances, you must be wondering. Everything. Every little thing. Things are just falling apart. Things are simply and completely going to shit. And you know what...? I feel fine. I feel like I've become so used to things not going the way I'd expected them to that now I'm just like, 'oh you too... well it had to happen at some point'.

The only difference is that amongst the things that are falling apart, my sanity is officially and clinically one of them. After the results of the test came back, they sat me down even though I was already sitting technically and said, 'Hey, listen, I know you think your mother is here. Or has been here and you seem to have this time block in your head where you felt like your mother had been there for all these special and ludicrous occasions but in actuality, you're just a psycho who seems to find comfort in a mother's image that has never been there. We're diagnosing you with Schizophrenia which coincidentally is what your mother had when she got locked up in that dumb, mental prison in Egypt'.

Was I shocked, Journal? That I have been seeing this woman so perfectly and in such vivid detail, to the point where I could point out her every freckle and birth mark, and she's been a fragment of my imagination and has never existed in my life? Nope. In fact, I'd find it more surprising if something as amazing as my mother's friendship with me was real. Me? Having someone actually care about me? Having someone around who is there whenever I need them, rubbing my back whenever I need to be comforted, singing me to sleep when I lost my voice...? There's no way a person as perfect as my fictional mother exists.

They said that I'd need to start treatment; more medication that they would monitor instead of Dr. Townsend as to make sure I wouldn't become addicted to it. Has the medicine been working? Beats me. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be doing. Making my ears ring? Check. Giving my vision cloudy spots? Check. Making sure I never find comfort in the fake image of my mother because she no longer comes around? Check, check, check.

Why is it such a bad thing that my mother was making an appearance in my life? Sure, it was all fake. Sure, it scares people to think that I've been seeing things that aren't real. It doesn't scare me though. The image, the hallucination, the illusion of my mother was relaxing. She was beautiful. She was happy. She knew who I was. That's way better than her genuine reality, wouldn't you say so, Journal?

She's back in Egypt all alone. Probably confined to one room where they give her no proper medication for her illness. Her ears probably aren't ringing; her vision probably isn't cloudy. She's been abandoned by her parents, by my father, and now by me. But it's all good that I know that now instead of being ignorant enough to believe that my mother somehow escaped and flew all the way to San Francisco to help me adjust to my new school.

A wise man once said: "Ignorance is bliss." I couldn't agree more.

Other things, of course have happened besides my abrupt dump into my mother's harsh reality. The doctor's allowed me to have a few visitors at a time for a few hours before they discharged me. Nobody showed up besides Connor who had only just gotten back to San Francisco from Canada for the holidays. He was still wearing his sweatpants and sweater from the flight. I could practically spot the snow flurries from Canada in his hair.

Not in a schizophrenic way, if my doctor were to read this. In the way that I know where he came from. I could also smell the maple syrup on his skin, but that doesn't make me crazy. It makes me imaginative. Assuming my doctors would even think there was a difference.