A Dresser is Transformed into Hope
By Mikki Trowbridge
Alternative Spring Break Detroit 2009
Well we ended up continuing our work at Vista Maria for Day 3 and Day 4 because they found more work for us to do. We had the awesome opportunity to continue our work with facilitates staff member Bob, while painting a 3-tiered hallway in a girls' dormitory area for the Bridges Program.
I'll write more about my observations and experiences in a different post, but here I wanted to highlight a story we found while working in the dormitory. I've seen in movies how girls in rehab or other institutions will write their stories or leave messages on the furniture in their rooms (dressers, beds, etc.). While painting, we found a dresser in one of the dorm rooms that had a story written in red marker on the side of the dresser that took up the entire side of the three drawer dresser. The story touched me in a number of ways, and so I wanted to post it in this blog so that others would have the chance to read it.
The Dresser Story (unedited):
“The System is meant 4 ur ass 2 fail!
Prove them Wrong!
I came from nothing the only person that showed me love (my momma) past away. My dady sold me to my momma. My aunt & uncle took me in after my mom died. My uncle raped me and took my pride which was my body I had nothing... I looked back to my family but they didn't believe me I cried myself to sleep every night in a place that I never felt safe enough to call home. I feel alone my whole family is in a different country (Philippines). The closest family I got lives somewhere in Chicago I have nobody but myself. Life is a struggle itself and my sleep can't help cuz I still have nightmares of getting beat up by "stepDAD" I was locked in the closset for hours... But I tell you that wasn't enough. I'm so use to pain that I punish myself by cutting I've almost taken my life away by pulling one of the veins out with a staple I got stitches before and I got my skin glued back together. I was born to fail But somehow I still keep going.”
Reading this story, on the side of a wooden dresser, in a room that was MAYBE 8'×10' for two people really weighed heavy on me. I don't know this girl—I don't know where she is today, but I've heard her story, and she does a very good job of telling it.
Life for me is so easy compared to this. Look at all the obstacles this young woman has to overcome just to get up in the morning, much less to be successful or really make anything of her life.
Before the age of 18, this young woman had been sold, raped, lost her mother, beaten, locked in a closet, and had been cutting herself. And of the family she did have, no one believed her. Who do you turn to when your own family doesn't believe you? I can't even begin to fathom how I would deal with the challenges this girl faces.
Reading this story makes me think about the assumptions we make, the conclusions we jump to about people in need. What do we not know about the people we interact with on a daily basis that makes them who they are? When a co-worker bites your head off, what's going on that you don't know about that could be creating that? When a child is misbehaving in school, why do we always assume that they're just a bad kid? When someone is homeless, why do people so quickly turn to “oh, they must be lazy or they wouldn't be homeless?”
This is the story of a nameless young woman—a young woman who represents young women and men across our country and across the world. Young people who are born into situations and systems that set them up to fail. Young people who are dealt an unfair hand. For those of us who are dealt the winning hand...how can we be satisfied to just be happy with our lives and not reach out to those in need? Stories like this are why I volunteer, why I choose to be active in my community...because we're not all dealt the same hand, and sometimes all it takes to succeed in life is someone who cares. I don't go on these trips in service of others...I go on these trips to serve with others, to show our world that we care, and hopefully if and when I'm in a time of need, someone will care enough about me to reach out their hand as well.
This week I painted a boiler room and the hallway of a dormitory. The hallways of the Bridges program at Vista Maria are brighter and cleaner and provide the girls of Vista Maria a clean slate at the place they call home.
Keep going author of the dresser story... prove them wrong!!