I mostly agree. I do think there are some people who are just 100% evil. I have little tolerance for child abusers and (at the risk of inciting some derision here), maybe even more so, animal abusers. In my line of work, I've seen the worst of the worst and the impact that has on the people who know them. I work in mental health and drug and alcohol, primarily kids and teens and the abuse I witnessed firsthand and through working with the children was just enough to rot your soul. And unfortunately the system is such that these kids will be forever stigmatized and do not have the support they need to be rehabilitated and allowed back into the world as happy, functioning people. They've been sequestered in institutions and bounced around in special needs foster homes and have been failed by everything around them. For the most part, I've tried not to be jaded because that's the point where I lose my ability to do my job well and it may not sound it but I have been successful. I believe people innocent until proven guilty and I believe in second chances but I've also been edged with some realism. The real truth is that it's not about the numbers as much as it is about where these people are. Many of the worst people in the world hold positions of power and influence, making their existence count for much more than so many of the wonderful people in this world as we struggle to effect change on whatever level we can.
Anyway...enough of that. People suck sometimes, but other times they don't.
When I first came home from college (a long story in and of itself that I've told here before), I was a little at loose ends. I started out sitting around at home, which was good on the writing front but very bad for my mental health, since I was alone in the house from 4am to 7pm. Within a few months, all that silence and isolation had me paranoid, anxious, and clinically depressed; all things I'd been headed for anyway due to the college situation.
So I asked my sister's teacher if I could help out with her class (special ed). She was thrilled to have an extra hand, since she was trying to teach 30 kids ranging in age from 11-15 and in ability from about first grade to fifth. Add in the fact that almost *all* of her kids had other diagnoses (autism, reactive attachment disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, *severe* ADHD... not to mention cerebral palsy, spina bifida, severe epilepsy, blindness, and hearing loss) and she had a hard enough time just getting them all settled down at their desks, let alone learning.
(I'll say it again, she was an *amazing* teacher. All of those kids came into her class not able to tell time, count money, or interact with the world independently. They all left her class able to do all of those things, in spite of everything.)
So I pitched in and worked for/with her for about 5 years so that she could break the kids into smaller groups according to their abilities, and thus make some more progress.
I'd say about half of those kids had horrific home lives. About a quarter had been bounced around the foster care system all of their lives. We reported abuse where we found it, but often to very little if any effect, and the "best case scenario" was for a kid to be removed from their horrific home life only to be bounced around foster care till they aged out.
The teacher, being officially a teacher, wasn't allowed to take the kids off of school property outside of school functions, of course. Since I wasn't officially a teacher, I wasn't bound by those restrictions... so every weekend I'd take a few of them out for a little while... a movie, the park, just something for a little bit of refuge. I could never afford anything "fancy," but most of them were just glad to get out of the house, and going to the dollar movie theater or the three dollar all you can eat pizza place was a special occasion for them. (My sister was very put out about being "left out" of these trips for a while, till I explained to her that the kids I was taking out for a saturday afternoon didn't get to do that *any* time other than when I took them... she was horrified. I didn't tell her that most of the kids I was taking out for the day also had cigarette burns and fresh welts all over... that would have been more than she could handle.)
One day, the teacher pulled me aside and asked me why I kept doing it... "you don't have to give up *every* Saturday for them. I applaud what you're doing, but don't burn yourself out doing this... there will always be more kids coming who are in equally horrible situations, so all we can do is report it and provide a safe space for them."
I thought about that for a week or so and then went back to her. "You asked me why I do this, even though I know it'll always just be a drop in the bucket... I do it because it could easily have been *me*. If I'd been born five or ten years earlier, I would've been institutionalized at birth. I go around every day knowing that if anything happens to my mother, I will *still* have the system swooping down on my sister and I, and demanding that I justify why I shouldn't be institutionalized... even though I'm fully capable of leading an independent life, and fully capable of helping my sister do the same. I've had friends who were summarily shoved into a group home because they had cerebral palsy and dared report an instance of clinical depression - and because they didn't have a family member to help them advocate, they were instantly institutionalized and haven't been "allowed" to go back to independent living, even though they're now capable, because they're assumed incapable on sight. And the fact that that horrific possibility in the back of my mind would still be *better* than what these kids go through? That terrifies me, angers me, and motivates me. If, God forbid, I ever get institutionalized against my will, I would hope someone - anyone - might read the desperation in my eyes and be good enough to take me out in the world once in a while to do my own grocery shopping, or see a movie in the company I would prefer to keep, or take me out for a meal. If I were lucky enough to have that, I could deal with the nightmarish day to day. *That's* why I do this."
After my sister graduated, that teacher switched school systems, so I haven't been able to volunteer in a similar fashion in a while (and to be honest, both my health and my finances don't allow for such things on a regular basis right now). However, a bare few of those kids went on to claw their way into a modestly successful working class adulthood, and some of *them* picked up the torch for me... so *they* now take the kids in that situation from their old school out on Saturday afternoons.
It's not much - it's not nearly enough, and it never can be - but it's something.
Currently vaping some Butterscotch and Cafe Coffee... good stuff, though I'm still semi-patiently waiting on Sticky Bun.
