Hey JPDakota! Good to hear from you!
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Forgive me if I'm out of bounds.
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Nah! Not at all! I mean, hey, if I'm going to put a thread out there then I have to be willing to accept all who come to reply. Everyone's point of view has merit, IMO. Yeah, it might tick me off for a bit, but sooner or later I'll weigh it out and be back. I love to communicate with people! (Gee...whoever wouldah thunk it, huh?)
Besides if I'm not willing to hear what people have to say, then I shouldn't start a thread to begin with. (LOL! I sent someone a PM with that message once. They didn't like me much after that!)
Anyhoo...Actually I really liked what you said here and there is a great deal of truth and wisdom in it.
You know, it's been my experience that in poorer neighborhoods a lot of people choose to keep their children with them, or they choose abortion. Adoption is a rare thing. Again, that's how I've perceived it - though I don't know the statistics in fact.
It's almost (IMO) like people are thinking, "poverty has taken my ability to eat, to have nice clothes, to have a car that runs, to have heat in my home but it's not taking my children from me."
So there is that because I felt I surrendered to poverty, if that makes sense, by relinquishing my children. Not that I'm judging people who choose to parent their kids in tough economic situations - not at all - never. I'm just talking about how I've felt.
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If I were worthy or respectable or had courage, then I would be dead now."
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You hit the nail on the head there, my friend!
See that was the thing. I should've been a drug addict or in prison or a prostitute but I wasn't. I was something else, like the other kids who were with me; a teen just drifting out there, mooching food, scrounging for change in parking lots and sleeping in cars in the onset of winter.
And that's not strength or toughness. You guys want to know what tough is? Tough is the kid that lives at the end of some adult's fist and keeps on keeping on no matter how bad it gets. I was the oldest. My younger siblings were looking to me to do something; to fix it. I tried to defend them against step-dad and I failed miserably. In the end, I just couldn't take it anymore and I ran. Tough kids don't run. They don't. They stay and put up with it. That's b***s-to-the-walls bad-a** right there.
But I couldn't do it and so I ran into the street and because I did that two children now live as adoptees.
I feel so bad for my daughter and son. Who'd want that as a legacy? Shoot, would you? My poor daughters that are with me have to have that history through me. Why should my son and daughter have to ever know what I was? And yet they have every right to know.
Yeah. Sometimes it feels like it would've been better to not have survived. Lots didn't so who am I that I did? Ya know? That's how it feels some days.
I sure hope that didn't sound like the pity pot. I sure don't mean it to. I made my choices and I refuse to lie to myself about that. There's no honor in that.
Thanks for listening everyone.