I wrote an article about a girl that I have known since she was 12 years old and put the experience in an article with the title, Her Mother Broke Her. It has been some time now that I have updated anyone on this. It has all changed and I was forced to change the way that I relate to this young woman. She is now 18. My purpose in life is to go through things and then help others through similar experiences. So here I am telling you my story.
When hearing about her childhood and what she had missed I tried to bring some of that to her. I was sending her children’s stories. You know the ones, they Mother Goose rhymes and other fairy tales and stories. I accepted the toll charges for her calls to me trying to keep the channel of communication going. The Children’s shelter where she began her experience allowed them to make 10 minute phone calls. I have even researched, printed and sent to her various helps for the condition she finds herself in. She did have me believe that it was helping. Her upbringing wasn’t the best, but there comes a time that she must take responsibility for her own thoughts and actions. She is no longer 12. I have read and experienced that the age of 12 is an appropriate age of reasoning. I do believe they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. I don’t think there is that much immaturity with anything these little adults do. I have raised 2 girls of my own and have been involved with their friends and other little adults to know and observe that what they do is directly their own responsibility. I am lead to believe that it is the peers and their parents and some religious ideals that teach them that they are not responsible for what they think or do.
Some have said that I should just leave this girl and not ever have anything to do with her. One told me not to let this come between my husband and I and our marriage. Some of her family also told me to stay out of their business. I don’t think they realize that they are the ones who brought me into their business in the first place. The first time that I met her was the first day her Aunt asked me to take her and her cousins to the bus stop every day. When I met her I immediately felt some kind of bond with her, even though I had not met her before this.
So as time progressed I began to see the problems and some of the mountains she must face and overcome. Every time I tried to help her she would find a way to escape. Oh it got me into trouble many times and Child Protection Services was called on one occasion.
Eventually she ended up in a Home for Children who have repeatedly broken the law. This is how I became familiar with the Child Penal System. I wasn’t there when the law enforcement agency picked her up and transported her to the facility. I can imagine how embarrassing this was. I really didn’t have any contact with or from her for about 2 years. She called me a few times and told me where she had been and her side of the story of why she was there. Each time she would tell me that she would be free in 3 months. Well this went on a few times and then I didn’t hear from her for a while. One day she just showed up at my door. She had a Wal-Mart bag with some stuff it. She had changed her looks by cutting her hair really short, dying it and lost some weight. I thought she looked good and she sounded like she was a different person. She had lost my contact information and I told her that I would find it and give it to her again. We talked and she wanted my husband to go pick her up later in town. She got into the shower—funny how she likes to take a shower at my house. While she was in there I called my husband and he agreed to go pick her up at such and such time. She had to find a way to that location first and that was a bit difficult for her since everyone she knew had a job now and could not just take off to pick her up. I didn’t have a car so she was going to call some people and she did and she pleaded with one. Before she got out of the shower I went to put my business card in the bag she brought with her and what I saw shocked me and suffice to say that drastically changed our relationship. I saw a gun in that bag. I did not tell anyone and I was kind of afraid to speak up. This girl has an anger problem and I would rather talk to her on the phone or in a letter, if you get what I mean. So she found a ride and my husband came home and then went to pick her up. He waited for about half an hour but she wasn’t to be found. So he came back home.
The next day I get a call from the Children’s Home and she tells me a big story—story because later I find out the real truth—that was June 20, 2011. Now she has been in and out of that place since she was 14 or 15 years old. She told me about the things they have them do and how they live. She kept telling me that she didn’t know the rules. Being as she “sugar coats” the truth I decide to look up the site on the internet myself.
This particular facility is run something like a school but they just don’t go home, they go to a cell for a single person. In this cell they have a thin mattress they sleep on. The small window is barred and the room is all white. There are no pictures, curtains or anything that one could call a bedroom. They have 5 minutes to shower and they are strip searched going to and from their cell on a daily basis. They are permitted to have a few sheets of paper to write on. They can only use the rubber writing instruments that are provided. Each day they have to go to classes and therapy and meals. The only time they are around others is when they are at meals and some scheduled activity and maybe in group therapy. That sounds to me like a lot of time to be in contact with others. If they have visitors they are strip searched before they meet with them and after the visitors have left. Just like a jail there is rolled barbed wire and electric fencing around the facility preventing them from leaving or anyone from coming in. One rule this facility has is what they call “self-mutilation”. This girl told me that she shaved her private parts and didn’t know that it was against the rules. She lied and I told her so in a letter. I also kept asking her why and where she got that gun. To this day she has not divulged that information. She still has not taken responsibility for knowing that this is the reason that got her there in the first place. She doesn’t think that I do research on things that she tells me. I did tell her that I went to the website of the facility she was living in, so I KNOW what the rules are. I don’t give her an inch and will tell her what she is doing in a heartbeat. Only I don’t think she believes that. This facility can only keep them until they turn 21. After that I have no idea what they do with them.
A few times she would call me and tell me that she just came out of security and that she hit someone or started a fight with one of the other girls. I really do love this girl and can see past the hurts that she has been through and that she is a beautiful spirit underneath it all. She has a hard road to finding her true self and I love her for that. This is Unconditional Love. There are no strings attached and it is what Jesus was talking about. This is why I cannot just walk away. She is another human being who incarnated to this life for a purpose to find her true self. No one should walk away from that.
I thought that I was helping her, but come to find out she is not ready to be helped. I can no longer help her by being there for her. This is the tough love part. I know all those letters will have some effect on her life, but not just yet. Knowing when to let go is a difficult thing to learn. In this case I learned it right quick.
She called me Monday morning after many missed calls during the weekend. It was from a different place then where she was at the last time I talked with her. She was in an actual Jail this time. I accepted the charges and she told me why or how she got put in the Jail. This place is not the Home for Youth. It is a full security jail. In that facility you get nothing unless you have money to buy it. I mean anything, like personal belongings, underwear and those sorts of things. She gets no paper or stamps unless she buys them herself. She asked me to call a family member for them to send her some money so that she could get some clothes and paper and stamps to send letters to me. She went on to tell me that that family member would not take the collect calls. I asked for the information because I didn’t have it anymore. She told me that she would call me back later.
It was during this time that I really began to step out of the situation and see it from a different view. What I knew and could see was that she is still at the “poor little me” stage. She still doesn’t or won’t comprehend what her thoughts and actions are and how they relate to others. I would have thought that she would have progressed a bit further than this. I believed her when she told me that she was changing. She wants to change really bad, but she hasn’t at all just yet. She is only using me as a crutch. I can see that some of her thoughts processes have come from her early childhood, but not all of them. Her anger level and huge attachment to material things is just overwhelming. People have become afraid of her and she doesn’t understand that. I asked my husband if there could be something wrong mentally with that and he agreed that there might be. She was drinking alcohol at the age of 3 for goodness sake. Slowly you could see, or I could, that even her family was pulling away from her. I am doing the same thing. She has no control over her anger and outbursts are getting worse. The gun and her secret she keeps about it worries me. Who knows what she was going to do with that and who she was going to hurt in the process and then blame it all on them. No sir, so through reflection I began to see the only way that I was going to help young woman. It wasn’t an easy choice, but a clear one indeed. I had to let go and let her learn for herself. I have given her many tools that she could use, but she is not choosing to use them. Her anger is still getting the best of her. I had to pull away completely. I had to use Tough Love.
My husband agreed to tell her that we would not go that far and not call her family. We all expected the kind of reaction she was going to have. Instead of thinking, which she has lots of time to do, she burst out with she wasn’t going to ask me to help her anymore. She doesn’t realize that I am helping her. I ended the conversation with, you are in Jail. She knew the consequences of her actions when she jumped the other girl and then hit the security officer. She put herself there and she is the only one who can get herself out. Yeah, it is hard knowing what she is going to go through, but it is going to be the only way she will think for herself. There are going to be no crutches or safety nets for her to depend on anymore. It will just be her.
There comes a time to have and show unconditional love is to just let go.
