brush toe heel heel
shuffle ball change
shuffle ball change
cramproll
cramproll
stomp
ball change...
Something about the way that the teacher's voice would resound through the studio and keep us in line twenty some years ago does the same thing to me today.
Thankfully.
Because sometimes I need to be reigned in.
***
Last night I was watching a show, where a mental health therapist secured herself an internship at a health clinic. She walked in and there were amok-running kids everywhere, sick&dying&dirty people all over the place, and she looked overwhelmed. Like she couldn't breathe. Like she couldn't keep her breakfast down.
Then she read through the files and she couldn't take it. After a case consult with her co-workers, she got herself a new placement.
"Bitch", I thought. "Elitist" "Snob" "Weak" "Quitter"
A moment later I realized that the average person, especially the average middle-classed well-seasoned white person, has never been exposed to anything like that.
Never had to sit down with a member of the underclass.
In their homes.
In a clinic.
In the streets.
Never had to walk through a crowd of indigent people.
Hold a child who might die because he lacks a social security number.
Read a case record that details the life and the person behind the crackhead, behind the illegal immigrant, behind the welfare mom, behind the bum, behind the gangster, behind the dealer, the whore, the rapist.
Those people, who are hardly viewed as people, start life as children just like all of us. An awful lot happens between birth and labeling.
An awful, terrible lot.
Seeing things like this has become so much a part of my life that I forget that it isn't a part of everyone else's.
I wonder what my day would feel like to me, at 33 years old if I wasn't a dozen years into it.
I wonder what is right with me because I can handle it.
I wonder what is wrong with me because I can handle it.
***
Yesterday was a tough day in Philadelphia Social Services.
One of our children died.
A horrible death.
Beyond an accident, neglect, beyond a beating, beyond beyond beyond.
It's hard on all of us when we lose a child.
We feel anger. Guilt. Sorrow. Responsible.
What did I do wrong that this child didn't make it?
I don't know the family.
I don't work for the agency who tended to them.
I don't work directly for the City.
But somewhere, somehow maybe there was something...
There isn't. Wasn't. Won't be.
But I can't shake the feeling.
We can't shake the feeling.
The papers give basic details.
The city and school and agency records give detailed history.
The police and hospital and autopsy reports contain things that shock the most seasoned veterans in this field.
There is a reason you don't get the full story on the news. It isn't to protect the privacy of the family. It isn't to protect the the police investigation. It isn't to protect the social workers who were in the home.
It's to protect your heart.
***
Please teach your children that if someone is hurt they must tell you. No exceptions.
Please teach your children to tell even when they are told not to.
Please be the mother that all the children can come to.
Please be the father who is not afraid to get involved.
Please be the teacher who pays attention to the slightest changes in your students.
Please be the social worker who takes action.
Please be the nurse who takes special care.
Please be the neighbor who calls 911.
Please be the adult who believes what the children tell you.
Please.
***
This little girl died, small and broken and innocent and tortured and precious.
We all feel so terrible.
But what if she lived?
What kind of teenager would she be?
What kind of adult?
What kind of mother?
Chances are she would be completely ruined. Completely horrible. Completely trash in the eyes of society. Ugly, hated, disgusting, filthy, pig, animal.
We might wish her dead. Gone. Away.
But she already is.
Maybe she would have turned to drugs to help numb the pain, to sex to help feel loved, to drinking when those things didn't work. Maybe she would become a terrible addict, prostituting herself to support her habit. Maybe she would lose her housing, her belongings, her dignity. Maybe she would have a child. A child that would be supported with tax dollars and hope and very little else. Maybe she would have another kid. And another. And another. What kind of life would she give those children? Most likely the same kind of life she was given. And they would give their children, and they theirs.
It just goes on and on and on and sometimes it seems so damn helpless.
Then again, maybe not.
Maybe she would have overcome.
Maybe twenty years from now she will have sat at my desk. Doing my job.
You just never know.
About anything.
32 degrees {comments}:
It's funny, how we're sort of "programmed" to view the world in such a way, to keep "our own" away from "them." Prejudice is a terrible thing.
I read the story about the girl. It's horrible. What a situation. And that people noticed she was off but nobody ever offered to help. How many people grow up like that, in the prison of their own homes, surrounded by thousands in their communities who don't notice, or who look away. How many kids honestly are taught by life that there is no hope?
Oh man. Everytime I see one of these stories (because they keep happening...) I can barely hold down my lunch. I mean it. I'm sitting here with a lump in my throat. Thinking of the girl in Philly. Thinking of the girl in Florida who was kidnapped and left in the trash. Thinking of the children across the globe who endure pain and suffering and abuse and trafficking. I just don't understand. I don't understand why people steal their little souls away.
Kids should be gleefully happy. They should be deliriously happy. They should be laughing full belly laughs. They shouldn't have to worry about meals. Or attackers. Or THEIR OWN PARENTS.
I'm going to go hug my boy.
I read this story too and I cried. I cried for Charlenni and all the children in the world like her. I also thought of you. I'm so happy there are people like you in this world who can handle these things because without you more children would end up like this child.
I also cried for the nurse who on three separate occasions tried to tell other people that this child was abused. I can only imagine the rage she must feel. She knew this was a child in danger and she did what she was supposed to do and still we lost this little girl. (I say we because when we lose a child in this way it's a loss for all of us.)
You are so right when you say that so many things make a person who they are. We're quick to judge others especially if we feel they are failing or aren't leading lives we think are respectable. We need to realize that there is and was more to all people than the person we see now.
Oh, that story hurts my heart. Knowing that as much as they DID say in the article, there's so much more they did not. That poor child.
wow---I applaud all of you who take on the task of trying to help those let fortunate. Thank you for the reminder: we are all a paycheck or a tragedy away from being in their shoes.
I try to do my part through theatre: presenting plays that address issues like this.
Keep the faith, E
I am so sorry to hear you are feeling that, "wish I could have done more" feeling and since I don't live there and I don't know the story and only can imagine the horror.
What is it that makes us turn our heads away or not notice a child in trouble? I often ask, "Why are we so afraid to get involved or step in?"
Well, from reading your blog I can tell you are not one of the ones that turns the head and you are in the trenches keeping the hope alive and feeling the frustration when others fail.
How terribly sad. I can only imagine the things they found on that poor child. It is sad that people saw changes in her, saw her limp, saw a withdrawn child, and thought absolutely nothing of it. It makes me sad, and sick, and.and.and. If you can save one child from a life like this, I think you are amazing.
So sad. I'm sorry.
I understand the feeling responsible. I felt that a lot as a teacher too. I can't know for sure, but I hope I was someone who was part of the solution.
That poor lonely little girl. How frightened she must have been. No one should die unloved.
stories as this are far too common. i say far too common, but just hearing it once would be a tragedy.
life is such an unfair beast. theres no other way to explain a small child being torn away from her family and found in a garbage dump. i wonder if the killer is an example of someone traumatized and over came the pain...well almost over came. i wonder what his or her story is? what drives someone to perform such a heinous act?
its all so heart wrenching.
What a heart-wrenching, eye-opening post. Thank you for speaking with such blatently truthful words.
I think I sat across the room from one of these kids today. I'm going to say a prayer for him, and for every child who is walking his walk.
How tragic and terrible and heartbreaking. I can't even imagine what it is like to do the jobs in the system that confronts these issues. I want the system fixed, but have no idea how to do that. I feel totally demoralized and defeated when I read about cases like this.
Where do we-you-they go with those feelings of guilt-remorse-horror? I wish I knew. Remember that you work hard to fix every problem you find, and they are not all fixable or findable. You have doubtless saved numerous lives. All you can do is all you can do. Bless you for your work.
And five-count riffs are my version of the tap step you hear in your head...
This story reminds me of a similar one that happened here.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26179235-23069,00.html
Ebony.
I wish i was as brave as you to deal with these sadnesses every day. And it is bravery.
It crushes the soul.
Thank you for doing the things, seeing the things that most of us couldn't see or do.
Thanks for taking care of those that need the taking care of. You do a great job. (how often do you cry?)
That's intense. Wow. I don't know what you do with that feeling.
I hear you, and this kind of person in you, the way you feel responsible, is what immediately drew me to your blog. I believe and teach my children that we- human beings- are responsible for one another. We are responsible to Help When We Can. Especially and Always when it comes to children. I do reach out when I have suspicions and I have taught my children to do the same. One of my children has a friend who we just recently asked if anyone was hurting her, that kind of line of questioning, because I just had a feeling. YOU KNOW that feeling, I know you do.
I've taught all my children to think about what suffering does to their peers, and how growing up in abuse or neglect could make a child angry, pissy, difficult, violent, weird, a pain in the ass, a slut, a liar- whatever- and how to look deeper into those kids, and see if they can listen, or get them help.
As a child who grew up in a home with abuse, with psychological fuckedness and pain and molest, I entered the drug world, the drinking, the desperation. I felt such desperation and soul suffering that I will NEVER forget.I got help. I was lucky. I changed my life. And I will never look away. I will always help.
You have my pledge.
Oh, gutwrenching words...
But there is everything RIGHT with you that you can do this job. And thank God or whatever the powers that be, that you, and people like you, do it.
I am so sorry for what you are going thru. As a peds nurse, I know how we felt when we lost a child. It's different, but not completely. You mourn and it stays with you always.
Thank goodness for people likeyou...
"I wonder what is right with me because I can handle it.
I wonder what is wrong with me because I can handle it."
Your words literally took the breath from me tonight. I can only wish that there are more people like you in this world. Take it from someone who's been there, just one person can make a difference in a tortured life; you may be that person to someone, so never give up that beauty inside of you or the courage it takes to just be able to walk into the building in the morning. Thank You.
This is a great post, Lora.
Lora, I often forget myself and appreciate your connection to my past which I so easily brushed away. I am not heartless, just the opposite. The pain is too much too often. I think of you as a hero, because I am one of those people who "got out". But I remember. I remember reading those case files too and I remember seeing those troubled souls as survivors more than anything else. To still have a will to survive after what most of them have been through just left me in awe. Every time. I cried when I read this story too and in a way was glad it was so out there, rather than buried as a page 8 story in one paragraph. That's a step in the right direction, at least I hope.
Wow, that was a really powerful post. We do just pass by people everyday who need help and never stop to wonder what they might need. Thank you for this.
That was some Honest Scrap.
Long ago people never believed the child it seems. Now they rarely do either. Then something heinous happens to the child and everybody says..."You know, I thought that kid acted sort of odd."
I'm glad you can do your job, because I can't and it needs to be done.
Extremely moving post.
I don't know how you do what you do. It's amazing.
Evidently, you are able to overshadow that bad events with the good things that happen.
My heart goes out to the little girl. I'm sad that she died. I'm happy that the torture she has been forced to endure is over.
Oh, Lora.
Thank you.
Oh wow.
It would be so much easier on me if you didn't write such passionate, visceral, heartwrenching posts.
It would be so much easier if you didn't make me think, or weep, or quesion my own self.
It would be easier, but it would suck.
Lora, I giggled a little at the start of your post becasue I teach tap.. I wonder if I'll be that voice in someone's head twenty years from now. Then I read on with shivers crawling my spine. It's horrific.
It happens because we the people are to afraid to catch "their" problems.
But, says I, teacher woman, do you know how many I have referred? How many go to a juvenile psych facility and then get put back in their homes? How many don't get the social services because: there wasn't a proven crime? Or that the "importance of keeping a family intact" trumps a child almost any damn time?
It isn't you. It's the system. It's because our society has decided in a de facto way that these people are not worth the money to stay alive.
What can we do? Ask these posters. Get out there and fucking help.
This was a tough post to read. Because of the things you said - it's true - most of us aren't able to handle it. But I read it because it needed to be read. And I thank you for writing it.
Thank God for you and people like you.
But you know you can't do this type of job forever.
Don't be afraid to notice, and know when to go in a different direction.
I did.
This makes two hideous stories I've read today. (The other one is that story of the 15-year old girl gang raped after a dance for 2 1/2 hours and a crowd watched and no one called the police.) What I want to do is put on some tea and drink it underneath a blanket and not come out.
For every child that is well cared for and nurtured and loved, there is another that isn't. And that truth is just awful to behold.
I have always wondered how you do it...I would be a constant emotional wreck if I had to see/know/do the stuff you deal with on a daily basis. Everyone I encounter--down to the homeless guy I buy Street Sense from each week--effects me. I think about everyone I meet. I worry about them. I wonder why and how.
Unlike the average middle-class white person, I have seen a lot. I have been the child of a junkie, had friends die from drug overdoses or be sent to jail, volunteered at a Baltimore City Health Clinic and visited homes(while working on a volunteer project) in Guatemala with no running water or electricity. Shit, I see hookers, drug dealers and crackheads on a daily basis. *Ahhh...Baltimore.
Jack on the other hand, had never lived in the city until he met me. His family is dysfunctional, but no more than normal. He is having a hard time with accepting the horror he witnesses as an inner-city, title 1 school teacher. He was really upset after the first round of parent teacher conferences. I have been thinking about doing a post about some of the stories he tells me, but I hesitate. No one wants to read these things. No one wants to think about these things....kudos to you for putting it out there and forcing people to acknowledge the world outside their cozy, comfy lives.
Post a Comment