C'mon Kids

Here is what I know about me. I love to believe that I can help others. For god's sake I work in a nursing home. But more than that I truly believe that I can relate to the troubled teenager and genuinely help them. Seriously, what are the odds that I can? Let me take a non-scientific guess, ummm zero? Zero is probably right. But in my mind I think back to my own youth and what I wish that someone had done or said for or to me. I try to remember that teenagers' brains are not fully formed and that is why they make crazy fucked up decisions. I also think that they don't have many people that care about them on a real "people" level. I believe that most "grown ups" tend to confuse teenagers with kids. Huge difference in my mind.

In another life, one in which I was not the role model of "what not to be" (based on my own life experiences) I honestly believe that perhaps I should have been a teenage counselor or perhaps I would have been a great foster parent for teens. But instead I do my own brand of counseling that I am not sure is the best. Let me clarify...

I openly give advice to teens with a troubling existence. I have to question if what I say to them really impacts them on a positive level or am I just stroking my own troubled teen self. Is it possible that our teen years can be so scarred that we try to heal ourselves through other troubled teens? AND in the process maybe I am so scarred that the words I give in trying to help them is really not helping them at all?

I am thinking of particular individuals...my daughter for one (I believe her father thinks she is a lost cause) her friends, including her boyfriend are what any sane grown up would potentially call a "lost cause". I on the other hand think I possess a real responsibilty to encourage that "troubled" teen instead of beating them down.

I guess I love the strays, the ones that everyone else dismisses or believes that will be the grown up loser, I am probably the loser. But being a loser makes me think that if people had believed in me I would be a winner. Whether I am right or wrong it doesn't really matter. I believe in befriending and encouraging the ones that no one else will.

I hope I live to see one or all of those teens blossom into something that no one else thought they could, something incredible, and definitely not a loser.

I suppose that if I feel even a teensy bit responsible for a wayward teen believing in themselves, it somehow makes me a winner too.

C'mon wayward teens, make me a winner through you...sad but perhaps that is the goal. My own redemption through the successes of others.