I don’t normally talk about my past because I’m always afraid of coming across as fishing for pity. I also don’t spend any time dwelling on the past. I have goals, purpose, people here and now who require my attention. The past is a corpse. There is no use carrying a corpse around. They’re heavy. I also know that there are plenty of people who had it way worse than I did, so I don’t mention my own experiences. It feels like I’m complaining about something that probably wasn’t that big a deal.
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.
I’ve been told I need to be more vulnerable, so lately that’s what I’ve been trying to do. More importantly, there’s a chance these things I’m about to tell you may help you in some way. That makes it worth it.
Hardships often prepare ordinary people for extraordinary destiny. — C.S. Lewis
The abbreviated run-down:
I turned 16 in the last of the foster homes I spent time in (four total at various times of my childhood). It was also the first time my little brother, Shawn, was with me. There were six boys total, seven at one point, all living in the a single bedroom in the basement. The entire main floor (upstairs) was off limits except the dining room while meals were in progress. The place was in the country, so we were only allowed outside or in the basement. That was it. In the common area of the basement was a television; the cable box had been programmed to only allow one channel: NBC. We could only watch TV at night.
Because there were so many of us, we were allotted one shower a week. The only possessions we were allowed were half a dresser’s worth of clothing (because we each shared the dresser with one other kid), and a few odds and ends, things we enjoyed. I had books and a Sony Discman (hey, it was the mid-1990s). No one was allowed an alarm clock or any decorations. The walls were stark white.
Essentially, we were stuck out of town with not much to do, which wasn’t bad in itself, but it was painfully obvious that we were there for one purpose only: to make the family money. They weren’t trying to do good for underprivileged kids like the other homes I’d been in (all the others were Mormon, by the way; it seems a noteworthy detail). We were fortunate in that there was no physical abuse or anything like that, but we suffered in other ways. When your wards don’t give a shit about you, there are other side-effects. Most of the shit they did to us ended up being psychological.
We were allowed one shower a week. If we wanted more, we had to take them at school. The elementary-aged kids didn’t get that option. Sometimes they locked the doors and made us stay outside all day. A lot of times they dumped us off at the Boys and Girls Club, which was cool for us and them. Sometimes we got to go to the local swimming pool. On rare occasions I got to stay over at a friend’s house or go to some event. That’s only because I was a good kid. The others weren’t so fortunate.
Anyhow. Here is an abbreviated list of things I learned from being there a little over a year.
1. Never rely on the good nature of people. Sometimes you’re on your own.
I was always under the impression that we were all in foster “care” because there were people who genuinely wanted to help kids. And I’m sure there were. Our case worker seemed to care. Every single time we met with her we made sure to update her on everything that went on there. Over time, as nothing happened, I started instructing the other boys to blow the whistle, since they had other case workers. Maybe someone else’s case worker would make something happen.
I later discovered that the response to complaints was to send someone out to investigate. They would come to the house and be like, “How many times do these boys get showers?” and the foster parents would answer, “As many times as they want.” Or they’d ask about us not being able to leave the basement. “That’s silly, they are free to come and go.” The family would just tell them the best answer and they would return to file their report.
Nothing to see here.
We eventually learned that we couldn’t always count on other people. We just had to endure the suckiness that life brings.
2. You don’t always have to focus on the negative.
It would have been really easy to get caught up in all the crap there. Trust me (see number 5 for another lesson from this). It didn’t do me any good to focus my thoughts on those things. I could choose my own perspective. I chose to redirect my energy, and focus it on the things I enjoyed. This is how to keep your sanity in a time of adversity. There are things that are beyond your control. You can decide to hone in on every terrible thing in your life, but that just brings your spirit down. Or you can decide to feed your spirit something else, something that brings you joy. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it.
3. There are diamonds in every pile of shit.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. — Winston Churchill
Even the worst things that happen have the potential to bring about some amazing result. You just have to learn to look for it. Every setback provides an opportunity. You always have the ability to learn from something. To grow. It’s up to you to make that choice. You can focus on the negative or you can focus on finding the diamonds in the pile of shit life hands you.
4. Some people will try to break you. Don’t let them.
Some people simply enjoy being dicks. They’re petty, vindictive. Some are just indifferent to your misery, which is a different kind of shitty. Some people derive pleasure from seeing others suffer, and some folks like the way exerting power and control over others feels. There were lots of little moments where I got the impression the foster parents there enjoyed messing with us.
They would make up rules on the spot and then take away something you enjoyed (which you would likely never get back). I understand rules, truly. But they should be communicated up front. So you know what not to do. Then, if you do it anyway, you can deal with the consequences. But this was often malicious. One time, another of the kids came home with a new watch. He said his mother bought it for him. But the foster parents one day claimed that a watch just like it had been reported stolen at school, and they confiscated it. They never gave it back to him, even though his mother vouched for him.
My brother tried running away four different times, because you were supposed to be sent to the Youth Crisis Center. “YCC” was sort of a half-jail, half-rescue place. Troubled kids went there, but also kids who had been abused and needed a safe place. It was a weird dynamic, and most of the time people hated going there. It was a badge of honor for the kids who got in trouble a lot, though. The foster parents knew he thought even YCC was better than their house, so they always declined having the police send him there. The made life hell for him because they knew it was the perfect punishment.
The foster parents took every opportunity to try to get a reaction out of us. I learned that they did this because they felt a sense of power by doing it, and as long as we didn’t react, you robbed them of their power. That’s the best response to people trying to get a rise out of you. Do not give away your power.
5. Don’t dwell on the things outside your control.
It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. — Epictetus
There were a lot of reasons to hate that place, and you could really force yourself into a quagmire of anxiety and woe if all you did was think about how shitty the situation was. All of these things were going on, all the time, and none of us knew when we would ever get out of there. You learn to distract yourself and choose not to dwell on the things that suck. I figured out that focusing on all of it was only making my time there worse. The actually suckiness already sucked enough without me adding to it. You can choose to dwell or transfer your thoughts and mental energy onto something else. So that’s what I did. My escape was to read books, draw, create things. It worked. Find your own way of diverting your thoughts onto something more positive or productive. Don’t dwell on things you can’t control.
6. Helping others endure adversity actually makes things easier.
During that year I managed to endure it all fine, but my brother caught the brunt of their cruelty, mostly because he tried to run away on four separate occasions. He spent an entire summer sitting on the stairs as punishment, and I would often go sit on the stairs with him to keep him company. He also had to weed an entire giant strawberry patch by himself the next summer, which he did all day every day for weeks. As an 8 year-old, it took him the whole summer. I would often go sit with him and help him out. I hated that they treated him that way, and even though I wasn’t obligated to join him in his punishment, I did it anyway. We grew a lot closer as a result of our shared experience. Solidarity is a powerful thing, and it can help to know that you’re not the only one suffering.
7. Hating them means they win.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. — Marcus Aurelius
The hardest lesson of all was learning to let go of any hatred towards the people who treated us badly. This doesn’t excuse their behavior, but the best way to get back at them was to not let them determine my response. I could win by being a better person than they were. While this was difficult, it really was the ultimate response. Don’t let other people dictate your response. Hating them would have just meant that they won.
-Janden
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