The Things We Can't Forget

By Emily Sterling, circa 2014.

I remember rain falling that Easter, cool, crystalline drops.  I remember racing, laughing, for the patio and shelter; I remember cheap, plastic eggs coloring the yard like wildflowers.  Days like today, I can almost hear my grandmother’s soft, ready laughter and taste the slightly melted chocolate of a Hershey bar left too long in the heat.

I remember walking beneath the elms and oaks with fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes accompanying each spring, air warm and dew lingering.  I remember love and peace and family, and the things we don’t forget.

Increasingly though, I recall the things we can’t forget:

A child, torso and legs covered in blue and purple bruises.  An addict pleading for a few dollars, a second chance, another needle.  A daughter talking of her father entering her room to do the unspeakable; the father a stalwart member of the community.  Five-year-olds acting as parents to three-year-olds; four-year-olds asking for beer.  Parents videoing their child’s beatings; children taking great delight in twisting a grasshopper’s wings.

It makes an interesting dichotomy for dinnertime conversation with old friends.  One speaks of a picket fence, freshly painted with its first white coat; another speaks of advertisements and a capitalistic economy.  Some speak of lab practicals and fast-approaching residencies; others discuss the latest oil spill in the Gulf.  I can speak safely of long hours and endless paperwork, and the table nods in understanding.  But one word of the ugly, and blank faces turn all around. 

Sure, they’ve all volunteered.  Spent time in soup kitchens or prison ministries, or visited nursing homes and preschools.  One thinks he knows that people can change; one doesn’t know the craving of a meth head.  Another wants to talk of child slavery abroad; I offer to discuss our own blossoming population of underage victims of human trafficking.  They’re good people, safe people, content in their redbrick homes and with abstract talks of science and politics, and I am glad to call them friends.      

But they don’t know.

Generations attest to the effects of abuse and neglect, sometimes self-imposed, other times not.  Teenagers stare at a cycle which seems nigh unbreakable, and statistics show that the odds are against them.  Victims return to abusers and victims turn into abusers as the vast majority of people continue in the lifestyles with which they are the most familiar.  For most—myself and friends included—the inertness born of one’s respective background and current position often offers the easiest solution, and allows blame to be cast elsewhere, ancestry and society being two common scapegoats.  For all though, the time for allowances has passed. 

Intellectual discussions, while very fine-sounding on congressional pulpits, offer no more protection for those at risk than the emperor’s fabled new clothes did his own person.  Some choose to lose themselves in their own pursuits, thinking drugs, violence, and another person’s poor choice will never affect them; others, similarly-minded, play a dangerous game of Russian roulette, experimenting with substances and relationships, thinking that they will be the one exception to the rule.

Few however would be so egotistical as to claim that, having been born into this world, they will escape having never felt the consequence of an act.

Abuse and neglect occur every day.  Obliviousness does not alter the fact, and willful ignorance only encourages the inexcusable.  No good reason exists for a child to be born addicted to crack.  No good reason exists for a ten-year old to be intimately acquainted with sex; no good reason exists for parents to beat their children for their own lack of control.  Yet in our churches and courts, schoolrooms and respective work places, and on occasion at our own dinner tables, we listen and we make excuses.  “She dressed provocatively.”  “He’d had a long day, and was struggling financially.”  A personal favorite remains “Mrs. G— would never do that.”

People do ‘do that’.  People do that every day, providing excellent job security to those in law and law enforcement, social work, and related fields but exacting a terrible price societally.  Brutal acts become the norm, and we are calloused.  We begin writing off instances as a matter of course or self-fulfilling prophecies.  “Yes, naturally, he beat the hell out of her.  She used meth and he is crazy.  What do you expect?”

Reasonably, I would expect no good from the aforementioned situation.  (Drugs and mental health issues don’t generally make for a nice mix, folks.)  Reasonably, I would expect appropriate consequences to be set for those involved, and I would expect that we as a society—whether in the courtroom, on the streets, or in the news—would hold the perpetrator accountable.  Reasonably, I would expect a general message to be upheld:

This is not okay.

Some boundaries are not to be crossed.  Relatively few blurred lines exist given enough distance and reflection, and while I am sorry that every one of a person’s relatives to the third degree of consanguinity were abusers of some sort or another, the fact does not justify what that person freely chose to do. 

The cycle must end.  

It won’t, I know, in my lifetime or in that of my children’s children.  The problem reaches too broadly and too deeply to be resolved so readily.  Inroads can be made however, starting with acknowledgment and ending in action.  Hold people—whether self, politician, press, or some other person—responsible for their respective roles in this fight.  Educate yourself and others; the ability to make an effective difference arrives from knowledge properly applied.  Ask that person-- adult or child-- who appears to be struggling how he or she is doing.  Care.  People will remember, and people will come back and ask, when a situation grows beyond their control, for help.

These are the things that we can’t forget:

A child receiving a flat screen T.V. on her thirteenth birthday, amazed by the generosity which unconditional love may bring.  A teen finding his place as leader of his baseball team; a youth discovering that she can succeed in college.  A sibling group clinging to the grandparents who won’t ever leave, even though their parents did.  Hope and stability, enough love to overcome all obstacles, and dreams for the future. 

These are the things we can’t forget, yet—for ignorance and inaction—we may never know.