Jeff, please don't lose hope. My family was pretty well busted up by the Program too. I have lost hope, long since, that that will ever really change significantly. As sad as that it, there's more to life. I just had to change my standard of success to reflect the handicap of effectively being an orphan.
There's no doubt in my mind that I could have gone to college, done well accademically and probably gone on to a successful career or opted out with a respectable, middle class Mrs. But I didn't have the money for tuition, the recomendations, the moral support of family. During that time when I might have concentrated on school, I was concentrating on building the social net for myself to replace that the Program had destroyed. I started almost from scratch. The rest of my siblings were pretty busy doing the same thing I was in various parts of the country.
I have to say I'm grateful to my dad for what he did, but it wasn't any of the traditional parent type things. Couple of times he gave me some money for my first $300 junk car, couple of hundred to get an apartment to escape an abusive lover. Nothing on the order of what most 18 - 20 year old kids would call normal parental support. Mostly he just quit condemning me. If I called or dropped by to visit, he was sincerely happy to hear from me. Invested enough trust in me to rent a house to me when he wanted to move. Stuff like that. And that meant a lot. It made it a whole lot easier to keep some perspective on the quiet condemnation I was getting from the rest of the family.
Aside from that, I just realized some years ago that life runs in cycles. If I'm down today, I'll be up tomorrow. No sense attaching too much signifigance to either extreme. This too will pass. Knowing that, you'll be keeping an eye out for the next good oportunity. Stay in touch, please.
-If there's a worse idea going than locking kids up for victimless crimes, it's probably locking them in close proximity to some tyrannical altruist bent on helping them even if it kills them.
Anonymity Anonymous