brave as a noun

I had a dream last night that I was out in the middle of nowhere and for some reason my mom was there and I was trying to bring her back from the crazy people who lived there, but I couldn’t. There was a point where I looked in the mirror and my face started wrinkling and sagging, my hair turned grey, and before I knew it I looked almost exactly like her.

I don’t know what any of this means and I don’t give a shit about subconscious thoughts but I do know I’m just so fucking sad.

My mom is dead and it only took a couple days for everything to get so fucked up. And now, nearly a month later, I’m still a useless mess. She was doing better. Our relationship was okay. She wasn’t drinking (or at least not nearly as much). I keep hearing over and over again the way her voice sounded when she left voicemails on my phone, because she said the same things the same way every time. I somehow don’t have any left on my phone to listen to. I’m terrified one day I’ll just forget her voice, or the way she said my name, or her saying she loves me. 

I got to tell her I love her one last time in the ICU when she was conscious and aware, and she told me she loved me too, and then the next day we were told we had to make a decision to let her go.

I don’t know how to exist in a world where my mom doesn’t, and I feel like such a burden to my friends because I’m just NOT the same as I was before all this, and every time we go out I end up having an anxiety attack and having to be coaxed back with breathing exercises, and I just cry.