Strays

I take in strays. If I could, my house and grounds would be covered with plants and animals, found or gathered from the wild or from rescues. Someday, maybe. Not yet. But I take in stray kids every day. Not because I'm young and hip, I'm not. I'm short and sassy, or "salty" as they would say.

Not all kids enjoy high school, or their teen years, or even their lives. Many suffer both physical and psychological struggles including abuse of all imaginable types and extreme neglect. But they don't usually stay very long, because when the system winds up realizing that nobody at home is paying attention, the family has to move along. Can't bear close scrutiny for whatever reason. I can list hundreds, but ignorance and poverty seem to come hand in hand. Ignorance that leads them to make at least foolish and sometimes dangerous choices that lead them down dark hallways into despair. 

How these people treat their children may be based upon their own young experience. Usually one is just like the other, only now the child is the parent, and there's a child they don't know what they are expected to do for, because nobody did for them. I have compassion for these poor struggling souls, but I'm more interested in the well-being of their children. I probably see their children more frequently than the parents do. When the child begins to unravel because of their life's traumas, I'm the one who witnesses it. 

Several of these strays come to mind, vividly, but I'll only tell the story of a few. Let me warn you. The hardest lesson to learn needs to be in your mind as you read. This is the lesson: You cannot save them all. Statistically. 

My first stray was a young woman with a pale aspect who didn't meet most people's eyes. Not that many of her peers sought her out. She was a loner. She had long, greasy black hair, and she always wore the same turquoise and black checked hoodie with fleece lining. Every single day. Summer, fall, winter, spring, summer. 

But in summer she changed. That's because a couple of teachers kept hammering at the counselors to please try to spare a moment for this child and pull her records. Turns out she had been in our District before, but the file had been misplaced (?!) that indicated that she was on an Individualized Educational Plan, or IEP, when she had been with us as a younger child. 

They retested her, discovered that she was extremely near-sighted, clinically depressed, and suffered from Tourette syndrome, hence the sometimes startlingly loud hiccoughs she suffered when stressed. Within two weeks of getting glasses, medication, and being set up with a therapist she had already changed dramatically. She actually spoke in class and before the year ended she made jokes. She had recovered her second semester, and wound up graduating high school last spring. She is still dear to me, and she comes by to visit on occasion. 

Another stray I had was a young woman who had been prostituted out by her parents. She had her first miscarriage at 12.  She had been in and out of foster care for years, but was living with her maternal grandmother when she came into my class. She didn't look as though she cared for herself, not maintaining good hygiene, but she was very open about speaking up for herself. Guess when Big Brother is your parent, you have to learn to self-advocate. And she was bright, a gifted writer. Her parents were in jail not because of what they did to her, but because of what they did to another girl whom they had kidnapped with the intent to sell her into the sex trade. She was in my creative writing class, and wrote candidly of her experiences. She knew she was in transition, was healing, and she utilized the medium of writing cathartically. She started washing her hair, and taking pride in her appearance, although her clothing was ill-fitting and of poor quality. She didn't have much, but she was trying to strengthen herself by caring about her appearance. 

Then she disappeared. Literally. Gone from my classroom, gone from the gradebook roster, gone from our school. I begged to be told what had happened to her, but nobody in administration would tell me. The friends she had made told me that she had been taken away from her grandmother and placed in foster care again. I was devastated. She would be moved to another school, another house, another attempt to be the kind of kid that maybe foster parents wouldn't dislike or mistreat. 

Can you for one wild moment try to imagine what it would be like to try to get an education, to function meaningfully in a massive, over-worked, bulging at the seams public school, while going through the types of personal experiences this young woman had? 

She was to be adopted, I heard through rumor. Then I saw her at a movie theater and she introduced me to her soon-to-be adoptive family. I was thrilled for her. What a marvelous opportunity. What a terrifying prospect. Months later, she was back in our town, in our independent student living program, as they had "returned" her. Yes, that is a thing. DHS had apparently neglected to mention to this couple that their newly adopted teenager had been forced into the sex trade as a child, been forced to take drugs, and had had miscarriages and abortions. You can't expect that transition to be easy, and without knowledge, they didn't know what was wrong with her when she started testing their safeness. How far they could be trusted. Because foster care kids have major trust issues.

Soon after making a brilliant start back at our school, she started missing classes, and missing therapy sessions. She had had a falling out with a boy, and went into a major depressive episode, incapable of getting out of bed. She missed enough classes that she became a No Credit student, meaning that unless she had an F, she would receive no credit for the class. When she stopped attending and doing work, her grades plummeted. Soon she was told she could no longer be a part of the program providing her with  housing and other supports. We found a program in the City that was for girls who had aged out of foster care, but they had to have graduated high school. Ultimately she found a program in a rural area that was supposed to help alternative students finish their education, providing housing and other support. That was the last I heard of her. 

So I have a stray boy, now. Stray boy are completely different from stray girls, and sometimes have problems with women, so for me they are fewer. But I have one now who I am trying to keep in school by providing a safe place.  He's wild a a march hare, and his last name means wolf. He has thick, straight black hair, and dark brown eyes. He shaves the sides of his head, but allows the top to grow long, and wears it in a ponytail or a bun. He wears the same hoodie every day. Every. Single. Day. 

But he approved of my movie selection (He was in my film as lit class), and appreciated the time I've spent in the martial arts and my fairly in depth understanding of how humans express violence. He knows I consider myself to be an internally violent person. And I possess extensive, in depth information about how to disable an opponent. He knows I know how he feels when he wants to hit a wall or a tree, or, God forbid, a human. He has come to my classroom several times when he has felt he might be about to hit something or someone. And he's mellowing somewhat. He still is in turmoil almost continually. He respects his father, but there is little doubt that he has been physically abusive towards his sons. I also believe that the father is probably the better of the two biological parents. I want to get him on at least a 504 for his anxiety, so he can be given permission to act logically in the above described manner. But his father won't go for having him tested. So I just tell his teachers where he is when he leaves their room and comes to mine. And he doesn't disturb anyone when he's in my classroom, he sits and reads or watches the class. He just needs that safety valve to curb certain behaviors. 

At the beginning of the school year, he threatened to have dropped out of class within a few weeks. I've convinced him to try to stay, and we're in  the middle of the second semester. He won't lose credits this semester (god willing) and  he will get that much closer to graduating. If he could be identified, he could be helped, which would make everyone else's lives much easier and support him in finishing school. Failing that, he knows I am present for him when he needs a safe space. I am trying to teach him the honor of the warrior's code. He cannot cease being a warrior, but he can learn self=discipline. He and another young woman whom I love dearly come into my classroom at many breaks throughout the day. They leave me messages on sticky notes when I'm not in my room. The boy has started calling us "Fam." And today as he was leaving, he quickly, and slightly awkwardly, hugged me before launching himself out of the room for the day. 

Oh, I could be his grandmother. I could be his mother, he certainly needs one, but I can't take them home with me. I want to talk to his father; I know how to talk to his father to get him to get the kid some help. But Mom is a nut case, and Dad doesn't want the kid to be a nut case, too, not realizing that their issues are quite different, and he would benefit tremendously from just a little more attention. So since we cannot help him without parental approval, I am going to keep doing what I've been doing by giving him a place to come where he is safe and respected. Well-regarded. I don't think he gets much of that, and he's such a bright kid, so clever and funny. I would love to give him a big bear hug, but one has to be careful to not appear inappropriate. He just needs his Mom, and she's not available.

I love all my kids, but some become friends when they graduate. I have been truly gifted to get to work in education. I pray my contribution is worthy.

getting better

i wasn't sure how long the surreal not-sure-who-i-was episode was going to last. the long walk at the lake was quite therapeutic, but i'm still scratching the bug bites. i went to the gym today, during the day, when all the mommies and retirees were there. i felt somewhat like an interloper, but i pretended that i was supposed to be there, i do pay, after all, to use the facility, and i enjoyed myself. the mommies weren't very friendly but the retirees were quite kind.

am going over to my mother's tomorrow to decipher some correspondence she has received from the Social Security Administration. i find it wryly humorous that i am better equipped to help her now with government-ese. guess it's a good thing.

but that brings up something totally unrelated to dhs; or, maybe not...my mother used to be so sharp. she was really smart. she could figure out how to find out anything, and get people to give her information they weren't supposed to share. she doesn't even know what her social security gross income is; she has difficulty differentiating from gross and net, and i know she used to know the difference.

so, how much of a role has stress played in the deterioration of her mind? granted, she has abused alcohol and prescription drugs for almost as many years as i've been alive, the role of which should not be underestimated, but she has also lived an extraordinarily emotionally stressful life. she has never understood boundaries; she frequently went beyond where hers should have been to the extreme discomfort of my father, and they fought about her behavior often. actually, he would just get angry and quit talking, and she would scream, drink, and throw things. then he died in a plane crash. then she went over the edge for an extended period.

she wound up working as a private investigator for my grandfather, we all did. she became an excellent investigator; nobody ever said she was stupid, just dysfunctional. and she worked on some major cases, one of them one of the most important cases in the history of this country. but the stress was too great, and she wound up a basket case by 1997, when i started doing a lot of work for her. by 2000 i was doing almost all the field work and writing the reports, and she billed the attorneys and took half the income.

so, long story still impossibly long, she never dealt, psychologically, with the reason my father nearly left her several times, before he died, and she never dealt with his death; she has repeated the same impossibly stupid mistakes over and over, and now has almost no quality of life; she is trapped, as a mere 70-year-old, in the body of an 85-year-old, and not a well one, at that.

i don't want to wind up like that. i don't want to be all alone, because i've always insisted that people come to me and never gone to them; i don't want to be isolated because i've never been involved in any sort of community; i don't want to be trapped in a space all by myself because i've made people around me so miserable for so many years that nobody wants to be around me. i want my daughter to not mind talking to me occasionally. i don't want her to dread talking to me on the phone, and even more the sporadic guilt-driven visits.

my mother gave herself up to her work. she renounced family and friends and community to be available for her work at any hour of any day. she would take a phone call at 9:00 p.m., with guests sitting at the dining table, from an attorney, even if he or she just wanted to shoot the breeze; she would talk for hours, completely ignoring the people there to visit her. i have lived in the same town as my mother for many, many years; i have lived in this house for 12 years; i can count the number of times my mother has been inside my house on the fingers of one hand.

dhs wanted everything i had. it wanted my muscle, bone, flesh and sinew; my brain and my heart and my soul. i tried to give it what it needed, what it demanded, but there wasn't enough left for me, for my own life. i felt i was being consumed by a voracious beast that had no knowledge of or interest in the damage it inflicted with its demands. as long as i was in the belly of the beast, i could *mostly* function; i say mostly because, towards the end, that even became an almost impossible chore for me; but when i left the beast, when it was finally sated for the day, or the week, and i was disgorged and allowed to crawl home, i found it increasingly more difficult to willingly return. it was painful, mentally and, eventually, physically. the last day i tried i found i could not push myself further; i had lost my flail; i could not drive myself another step. i knew i had to see a doctor, not so much to heal the physical as to verify the existence of the problem. i am so thankful for my doctor. he helped me acknowledge what i knew in my subconscious but did not want to face. he helped me admit i could not do the job any longer. and he helped me find a way out.

thank God.