The Galte Monastery

Chapter 2

Ana's mother.

I had known for a long time what was happening to my daughter. I mean, even today I don't know when she specifically entered the drug world until one day I found her almost unconscious sitting inside her bedroom closet with a needle still stuck in her arm. I think it was the most painful day of my life just before the day I was forced to throw her out of the house for her sake and to get her away from heroin.

Over time we were reconciled and she told me that she also did Valium, LSD, marijuana and ecstasy among others long before using heroin. I still feel like a bad mother for not having noticed and not reacting before. I will not deny that I feel like a bad mother.

When I heard about the story of Christiane F. I felt sorry for her, but at the same time I was happy because she had healed and empathized with her mom who had been going through the same thing as me, but in a much harder way. Ana never got to prostitution to get drugs, but she probably would have done it if I hadn't sent her to the Monastery of Galte.

At that time I was very believing. I had been raised in a house surrounded by crucifixes and saints by all possible corners and recesses and I grew up in the mentality that God heals everything. That is the reason why I made that desperate decision to send my daughter away from me and put her in a monastery near the Picos de Europa, south of Cantabria. I thought that such isolation would help to overcome her abstinence and that the Sisters together with the Mother Superior and the Bishop would get her to find the good way to go to rest and eternal life once the time came.

On that twenty-seventh of December of the eighty-nine, I decided to put all his things in a suitcase, call a taxi and make him leave. I didn't want any kind of goodbyes, since that would make me fall apart and so many sleepless nights planning a solution would have been of no use.

When Ana discovered what was going on she got nervous. She pounced on the closet looking for the little drug she had left to stick a shot and relax a little. Perhaps all she wanted was to disappear, even for a few moments. But she couldn't do it because I already knew where the heroine was hiding and had personally taken care of making it disappear. I yelled at her that I knew perfectly where she hid the drug, which was a lie. That same day when I started packing it was when I discovered it. She probably looked for that little bag all over the house without knowing it was in the back pocket of my pants.

When I finished packing all her things, I went down as I could downstairs with her bag on my back. That's when I found her lying on the couch soaked in a cold sweat, shivering and writhing in pain. Seeing that broke my heart, but I knew I was doing the right thing, so I went to the kitchen, grabbed the phone and called the taxi station for one to come and pick her up.

I made my guts and pretended with all my strength that this did not affect me when I went to the living room and stood in front of her. My soul fell to my feet once more when she looked at me with glassy eyes and swore once again that I would change.

"You know I can't believe you anymore, Ana. The taxi is on its way and it won't take long to get there. You should fit." I didn't dare to look her straight in the eye. I knew I would fall apart.

As I walked away from her, returning to the kitchen, I took a deep breath and tried to endure the urge to cry. I still don't know how I got it. I repeated to myself again and again that this was our only option. The Galte Monastery was my only hope of not losing my dear girl.