Cafe Hitch-hike

2004-04-01

In perspective Pt. II

I read David Pelzer's second book, The Lost Boy. His first book ends when he is rescued from his home. The second book continues with his life as a foster child afterwards. Without a family and a place where he feels he belongs, he acts out.

I realized that in his first book, he didn't go into the "whys" of his situation because he was only a child, a pre-teen. Children aren't at the stage of their development where they'd think that; with his abuse, his development was probably a bit stunted, too. However, he begins to ask himself those questions in his second book, but doesn't really find any answers. He hints that when he was an adult, he was able to see his mother again and she told him "her secret".

Next on the list: A man named David, by the same author.

I thought over what I wrote the other day about 'IT'. It's fashionable to blame our flaws on other people, events, and our parents. A lot of times that is where they originate and past hurts can leave terrible and deep scars. However, I think many people miss the next step in all of that. Identifying the source of hurts becomes the blame game and isn't taken to the next step, which is to make them right in whatever way we can or to live with it. From there, we learn how to cope, live with what happened, or change it. Sometimes it also involves a change of attitude. And, sometimes there are things we just can't change and will never change, just have to live with.

I think about this in light of my own experiences in reconciling my own hard feelings about things that went wrong in my own life and family, and things that I've watched or know about with people I've known. Some really weird shit happened to my younger sis Rosepetal and she once said she felt like an alien.

I told her those things happen to more people that she thinks. I thought back to when I was going to school at Rustbelt State. Yeah, I knew plenty of people who had way more money than my family ever had and came from these "good" families. A lot of them had problems just like mine: alcohol, drugs, and infidelity, and the other crap that trails these scenarios. What happened in our family didn't happen because we came from a blue-collar, ethnically mixed family. I really emphasized that is happens to others, and I hope she caught on.

I added, "when you move on and talk to others, you may see more people those things in common with you than you think."

Certainly, it takes a lot of courage to step forward and really let the truth come forward, and even more to do something with it.

With that, I respect David Pelzer's words. I can appreciate his description of the progression of trying to live a life after something so terrible happened to him.

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