I experienced a lot of abuse growing up. Some physical, some mental, all due to the effects of abuse on my mom and stepdad… it disperses onto others like a wave. It was disturbing to me, learning of the abuses my mother endured, the abuses her mother endured, and the lack of support they had growing up. I can fully understand why my mom became a drug addict, falling so far from her potential.
As an adult, she has helped me out a few times, she sends me things for my birthday. I still feel angry about the abuses I had to endure; angry about a school project they couldn’t drive me to a friends place to complete; angry about every little random thing she yelled at me for that didn’t exist or didn’t happen; angry for everything she did. But I understand. I understand how hard it must have been for her, enduring her own abuse, the abuse of her husband at the time.
I dream of a rehabilitation program, that incentivizes people like my mom to get clean. Each day she proves she’s clean, she gets an incentive, a reward. No punishment involved, otherwise you might as well go full Hitler with this because where does that end? Punishing the weak for their weakness, it’s a sickening thought. No, just the bottom line, enough to survive, and enough to have fun with if you follow the program.
As our society is, we don’t even hit the true bottom line, too many end up homeless as a result of bad implementations, of bad planning, of bad lifestyles. This is unacceptable, this conceptual nightmare of “do your best or suffer”, eventually the dam will break.
This is a moral dilemma, one that needs to be fixed. One that has good solutions.