Winning By Giving Up the Fight

"A person can grow only as much as the horizon allows." — John Powell.

Yesterday, the girl I’m “mentoring” (which equivalates to hanging out with and listening to whenever I can find a few spare hours from work) told me that she’d had enough. She didn’t know how much more she could take. She put her head in her hands and hid her usually smiling face, and said, “I’m so stressed.”

It turns out that she’s lonely too. And overwhelmed. The world of a teenager is full of unnecessary drama, and hers is no different in that respect. But in most cases, teenagers perpetuate that drama intentionally as a kind of hobby. Not in this case. This girl doesn’t need any more drama, and yet it keeps seeking her out.

There are around 3,000 young people in foster care in Alameda County, and this girl — let’s call her Ruby — is one of them. I’ve only known her since November 2011, but already she has lived in three different places (in the space of less than three months).

And there always seems to be the same problems. She doesn’t have any space, sharing someone else’s home not only with her younger brothers but with other foster children. The last place she lived was packed with three other teenagers, in addition to Ruby and her siblings. The two other problems are money and food, and Ruby says she doesn’t have enough of either. She needs a hat so she can keep warm during January’s cold snap, she says. But it’s always a fight to get a clothing allowance from her foster families. Last time her lawyer had to intervene (— yes, this is a girl who stands up for herself and her rights.) Every time I meet with her, she’s hungry, no matter what time of day it is. We stopped into Trader Joe’s once so I could buy her some snacks to keep in her room. Anything left in the kitchen cupboards or fridge gets eaten, she says, no matter whom it belongs to. And with multiple teenagers in these foster homes — some of them tall, stocky young men — that seems no surprise.

So, Ruby has to fight and keep fighting just to get an inch of what many American teenagers take completely for granted. She does a lot of things by herself, including taking the bus around town and to her after-school classes. She’s working on completing high school with good grades, and she’s been managing exceptionally well considering that her world is extremely isolated. The people she comes home to are strangers to exchange courtesies with, not to vent about her day to or to lean on for a cry. Those things she must do alone.

Despite the fact that I once might have considered myself in a similar, although far less dire, position to Ruby, I find that the advice I offer tumbles out of my mouth in clichés. I tell her what I know now is true: that these years are most likely going to be the hardest of your life, and that everything else beyond it — once you are able to escape — will be much better. But it sounds so hollow. If I had been talking to my teenage self, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

When you’re young and so defined by your environment, it’s almost impossible to see beyond the horizon. You assume that this is life, right here and now, and that it will always be this way. If your “home” is lost, and your environment unstable, how can you ground yourself enough to even move forward a few steps, let alone run a marathon?

In time, Ruby will discover that time is all it will take for her to be somewhere new and happier. But time is the most powerful, unrelenting force to a teenager who wants to fight her way out. There is no winning the fight against time, other than by giving up fighting.

For more information about fostering and adoption in Alameda County, visit A Pathway to Home.