Anger

I just finished watching the Primetime Special on foster children (I tivo'd it and waited until CJ was taking a nap to watch it. I am so angry I can hardly see straight. It's so weird, really, because I often think that I am beyond the angry, hurt stage and on to the healing and then BAM! I watch something like this and I am blind with fury. It scares me sometimes, as I don't think of myself as having so much anger just below the surface, but apparently I do. Just watching those birth mothers promising so much to those kids enraged me. I lost all perspective and was that little girl again, reading her birth mother's letters from prison, promising a better life and telling me that if I prayed hard enough it would all come true. How dare she? How dare that mother on TV give such false hope? I swear, sometimes it would be better if they just said, "look, I'm not going to get it together, and I give you permission to love another mother and be the best you can be. Don't hang on to me, I'm not worth it." At least then, when another person comes in and tries to be a real mother, the child has "permission" to attach and not feel disloyal. UGH!!! I am just so frustrated. It's so unfair and yet it happens every single day. Most adults can't stand being left in limbo, even over what's for dinner. Yet children are fed lies, manipulations and deceit every day by birth parents who have no intentions of getting clean and getting their kids back, they simply want to make themselves feel better by saying the words, as if words are all the child needs to feel loved and wanted. I've been there, I've visited my birth mother in rehab and left with such high hopes of reunification, only to be crushed days later when she ran from the rehab center after an old boyfriend. I still have the letters from her that I received while in foster care, telling me how much she loved me and how God had changed her. Guess what, the letters mean nothing. The words meant nothing. They were just another avenue to spew her lies out to me. It's not fair that kids are given such false hope. It's not fair that when the birth mom in the story was found she denied all allegations of sexual abuse in her house. How dare she? How dare my birth mother so the same. How dare she toss away my memories as falsehoods, when my memories are all I have of my childhood. How dare she. How dare us allow such things to continue...