“To this day, I sleep with a knife under my bed,” she said, explaining she has also taken self-defence classes.
Former street kid here. I didn’t end up in the foster system but three of my younger siblings did… as did dozens of my friends from the street along the way. It’s a fucking awful place. Lots of foster families take on several kids because they get paid from the gov’t a certain amount per ward. So some of the sickos turn it into something like a puppy mill and keep rotating new kids in as the other ones age out. You don’t get a lot of empathy or care in that scene. Those kids are institutionalized by the system itself from an early age, and then those “families” openly exploit them. Does anyone who understands this stuff wonder why foster kids grow up hating authority?
I will say that I have met the opposite too. Some of those foster parents are amazing people, extremely generous and huge hearts. Good minds. Good intentions. They’re out there.
Here’s another thing a lot of people miss. Not to take away from how much the foster system blows… but for every kid who does end up being taken away from their family-of-origin and thrown into that grinder, there are hundreds more who should be taken out of abusive situations or environments of shocking neglect (ask me how I know). To say that another way, if every kid (and questionable family of origin) were found and processed, the system we’re examining here would be multiple times larger in scale.
All these “save the children” assholes can eat a dick. Start looking around your own neighbourhoods. I guarantee there are several abused and neglected kids within a block or two of you in any direction. Even the “good” hoods.
I’m very sorry you had to go through the childhood you did. I have no idea what it is like to experience, but I did have many, many friends who lived a life on the streets. I am sorry, not just that it happened to you, and keeps happening to others, but that we turn such a blind eye to it. We have men with multiple billions of dollars, we fund oil and gas corporations, but we can’t feed and house children? It’s disgusting.
My best friend was adopted, and he lucked out. I won’t say his parents were the best - anything but - but they were flawed as many of us are. They tried their best. I absolutely agree there are hundreds of times as many kids in situations where they should be taken away, but are not. It’s very sad.
All these “save the children” assholes can eat a dick. Start looking around your own neighbourhoods. I guarantee there are several abused and neglected kids within a block or two of you in any direction. Even the “good” hoods
I hope that in the future, Gen Z starts to work on just that. The kids around them, the kids left behind, children starving in schools, climate change. For the first time I see a group who look like they don’t just care, but they’re willing to do something about it.
Again, I am sorry for what you had to go through, and the fact you had to go through it. You, and your siblings. I hope you’re all in better places, now.
Saul Goodman. Thanks for your words and solidarity. I’m glad your friend did okay. I’m now in mid-life and I’ll be processing all of it for the rest of my days. Thriving in my own way, etc. I’ve made peace with as much as I can at this point, and will continue. I don’t know what’s become of my siblings to be honest, I went full no-contact with a lot of that part of the family. I hear things every few years. They’re all aged out now, some are doing better than others.
You nailed it with references to the economic system, parasitic billionaires, etc. When you dig deeper into PTSD or frankly any other mental health diagnoses it starts to become clear that modern society itself (or whatever elements of modern life you care to throw your stick at) are huge components of what’s happening en masse. Hate to break it to all y’all doubters but we’re not meant to live like this. Modern tech is awesome… I use it. I have a stable career because of it… but yeah. Watching the natural world around us collapse while we thrive (i.e. for a few decades, until we also collapse) is fucking with our collective consciousness. Whether some of us can acknowledge that at the moment or not… it’s happening.
I don’t know if Gen Z will pull us out of the dive but I hope something clicks with the vast majority of people coming up. It’s extremely hard for most folk to turn away from a momentary feeling of security, safety, pleasure, abundance and comfort (even the manufactured, synthetic variety). Even if we know it’s toxic and self-destructive. Ask your nearest addict what that’s like… you might learn something. In strictly biblical terms, we as a species have created a pretty good mindfuck for ourselves.
Good times.
Meanwhile my neighbor called social services on us because they had not seen our children out playing enough in their opinion, which resulted in months of check in visits when no problem existed. They need a more resources and prioritization. I feel like workers in higher income areas are reaching for something while those in lower income areas do not have enough resources to do all the check-ins required.
Honestly, the people that apply to host foster etc needs to go through psychology checks periodically. Cause people change over time, different env/financial stress will also change how a person respond to future events. Like every hierarchy of the work chain basically, cause what they see, hear and deal with needs some cope mechanism, and sometimes it becomes “it’s not gonna be that worse, right?” Cause they can’t really take it if they dig in, and kids suffers, the workers got slammed, and people go to jail because we don’t check periodically.
