Bursting my Bubble

So I've never done the whole blogging thing... I'm not sure why I'm starting now. Perhaps it's on the off chance that there's someone out there just like me whose friends don't really 'get it' and who needs a different outlet.

I'm from New Hampshire. That says a lot about me by itself. My town had 700 people in it when I was there. All white, all middle class, all modestly educated. I came to Boston for college totally naive and not realizing that doing so would challenge everything I knew about life. See, in NH things are easy. You don't have to be rich, you don't have to be a college graduate, and most importantly you hardly ever see people suffer. You don't really realize that there is suffering, because you're hundreds of miles away from places on the news. You live in a plastic bubble that's easy and comfortable to live in and there's really no reason to leave. A lot of people never do. I did.

Boston is only 3.5 hours from my town, but it's a world away. I think the first time that really hit me was a few weeks into my freshman year at BC. I was a mentor with Big Sister and my Little Sister's school, though in a decent neighborhood, was the poorest I'd ever seen. It was small, dark, dirty, tragically underfunded, and surrounded by an ominous barbed wire fence. Most of the teachers were fresh out of college, and they wouldn't last long. The kids got bussed in from all over the city. My little sister was a 9 year old from Dorchester, and she told me once that she was too afraid of drivebys and rapes to walk down the block to the local convenience store.

Now I'm a group mentor, and in my 2 years doing that I've heard girls tell me stories so sad and frightening I wouldn't have believed them 3 years ago. One of my girls, at the age of 12, was anorexic, had alcoholic parents and a brother in prison, and was being abused by her 16 year old boyfriend. These stories horrify me, and I'm glad they do. It should terrify us that these girls can speak casually about the wost violations of basic human rights. They think it's the way things should be, because it's how things have always been, and nobody has told them that they deserve better.

Is anyone else out there as angry as I am that more people aren't losing sleep over this?


I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ~Mother Teresa

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~Anne Frank

It seems to me that any full grown, mature adult would have a desire to be responsible, to help where he can in a world that needs so very much, that threatens us so very much. ~Norman Lear

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. ~Edward Everett Hale