There's always hope

I don't really know how that kind of stuff work. I mean, either you belong, or you don't..right? I belong in my family. Not because I have earned it nor because I paid them to like me. I was born in to it. What if your family couldn't take care of you, or you were given away to adoption. Then you are in the System, and there is only one way out. You grow up, and not even then are you totally out of it. Because they will always have your documents, your fingerprints, your past in their thick folders.

How you grow up? You survive. That's the only way. You get through abusive families and foster parents who treat you like a baby sitter, a maid, trash. You get through fights with you foster dad, your foster sisters and brothers. All over America there are children struggling to survive, to get something to eat, to sleep while parents fight on the other side of the wall. If you are lucky you live with your blood brother, or sister, and it might be easier to get through everything with someone who understand you. But what happens when your dad hit you both, and one of you want to change family. Wants to tell the caseworker that their dad drinks and hits them whenever he likes. And the other one doesn't, because what if the next family is worse?

Can you imagine being abused from the age of 4? Being locked inside a bathroom with a bucket full of ammonia and bleach - the smell makes you throw up, being sat on a hot stove to burn or being hit in the neck so hard that you couldn't breath. This was the everyday life of Dave Pelzer, he was abused by his mother throughout his childhood.

Sometimes I feel like my world is against me, but reading about others pain and courage to survive make you realize how lucky you really are. I don't know how or what makes them believe in better tomorrow, but they do - against all odds.

Peace. Ida.