"The difference has always been what I think of myself". That was my response, when my friend asked how it is that I never seem to get affected by what is done to us or said to us by the guardians or workers in our shelter.
The shelter is home to over fifteen (15) children who have all at a point been left on the street to cater for themselves. Some carry diseases, some are drug addict and some have been molested but, all have some level of low self-esteem.
When the administrator is around of course we are treated nicely but when she goes the workers send their kindness and humanity with her, you can try to report them but even if a worker gets sacked you have the rest of them to contend with. If the street wasn't so hard many kids would have returned, but on the street you get worst bosses and there is no one that they fear to make them deal with you with the least horror. Where the workers will give you a punishment like cleaning all six bathrooms, the bosses will give you faeces. Where the bosses will flog you to bleeding, the workers will insult you to crying. And because the workers have someone to account to if you get overly sick or pale, they feed you with good food and supply other needs too.
Personally I think the reason the workers try so hard is break the spirits of the children. I mean Yes! The workers are there, high there in the ladder of wickedness, but the kids aren't saints. They use the house to their advantage or the house situation to their advantage. "After all the pain won't be too hard to handle or it's just mopping and unending yelling I'll get for this kind of misbehavior" they say.
But, by the time you spend a year in the shelter yes you'll have received your own share of low self-esteem. They call it "the breaking" the breaking because it doesn't end, not even after you leave the shelter you still get the breaking in your spirit, their words will keep ringing and it will linger on like a stench.
So after two years of not breaking I guess everyone wondered how I did it.
Well........
To be continued!
