A friend and I have been having a lot of conversations lately about hurt children. We live where we see children on a daily basis whose most basic needs are not met in a way that I bet none reading this would think adequate, never mind conducive to a healthy outlook for their future prospects. More to the point, we've spoken very directly about which child we wonder what headline we might read about in when he's older. It's not an exaggeration for me to tell you I've taken photographs of children here that break my heart in the post production process. I can't turn my head from the story the pictures tell. And my friend and I don't lie either when we speak of these kids.
I know something about hurt kids. As the oldest of three kids in a crazy home replete with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, I had early lessons. I have memory of no home I lived in as a child that doesn't begin with me remembering which corner of which room I sat in every night when it was time for our tormentor to come home from work, listening for the turn of the tires on the gravel driveway that would herald God (I had no choice then but to believe, hence the capital G) only knew what, dependent on God also only knew what, but it just always seemed out of my control.
I, of course, could save none of us, but it should be no surprise that I ended up working most of my adult life in the field of mental health. But I never worked with children. I very deliberately did not work with children, because I am not strong enough. For a short time, I did do a few substance abuse assessments on some adolescents, and even those short sessions were more than I was the right person to do. Sitting across from one so young who was in so much obvious pain and already so far along on a path that could have almost no good end, all I wanted to do was hurt somebody. Not exactly a therapeutic response.
In the second blog piece I wrote tonight, I wrote about trying to get help for my son so he could recover from the pain he was in as a child. What I didn't mention then was the times I'd step out of the elevator at the hospital to visit him in the pediatric psychiatric ward, to be greeted by a new kid on the ward, another victim so wounded that only the blind wouldn't notice at first glance. Another child whose eyes and screams made it clear they'd already endured what none should have to in a lifetime.
Then there was Colby. Colby was the same age as my son (14) when he took a gun one morning and shot and killed his father, his mother, and his older sister, his only sibling, in their Chicago home. Then, he picked up the phone and called the police, reported what he'd done, went outside and calmly sat on the stoop waiting for the police to arrive.
I've tried many times to search on the internet to discover whatever happened to Colby (not his real name, btw, but close). It was a big story in Chicago when it happened, of course. His dead dad had been a Chicago cop. The papers ran a few stories for a few days, the usual comments from neighbors who 'never suspected a thing' and the neighbors who spoke about the father who never took off his cop uniform, even at home or on his days off.
They didn't print the other stories I knew about. By the time Colby killed his family, my son and he were no longer together in the psychiatric hospital where they'd met. Blessedly, my son had just begun his first year in the school I also wrote about, but he talked to me about Colby. See, Colby had told everybody in the hospital what he was going to do. He'd told the other kids. He'd told the counselors in group. The other piece, of course, is that Colby's home was so violent and his family so terrorized by the head of the household, that this child believed that was the answer to the problem. So, that's what he did.
I sometimes like to imagine that there was a family member somewhere, or a family friend, or maybe even a person in the system somewhere who might find Colby at some point in time to salvage enough of him that he might have a life. I've never been able to find out. I suppose how long ago it was (pre internet) and the laws regarding juvenile records combine to make it difficult to figure out now. I didn't know Colby, not really. But my son did and he was briefly his friend. I've never forgotten him.
How many Colbys are out there tonight? How many more kids raging for whatever reason, from the point of whatever unrelieved pain? This is something else my friend and I talk about a lot lately. How to save these kids. We can't save the world, but can we make one thing better for one kid at a time? Can it make a difference if we do? We can't adopt and raise these children, but can we ignore them?
Alice Miller wrote several books decades ago about hurt children and what happens when there's no redress for the child. I can't recall all of the titles now, but I'm sure if you search her name and The Drama of The Gifted Child, and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware for titles, you'll be on the right track if you're inclined to read some theory about all of this that's written by psychologist Miller in terms easily understood by the layperson.
Now. I was sure when I started to write this that I had something that needed to be said. I'm danged now if I'm sure I've said it or even just what it was I thought needed saying. Maybe I just needed to vent. The kids just get to me. The little kids that were me and my siblings. My own two kids. Colby. The kids that live where I do. Hurt children that need help. While resources are drying up and the inclination seems more to damn and blame than to help.
