
said in an earlier post that i’d been having quite vivid dreams lately.
another of those awesome (but not so awesome) dreams woke me with a memory. and it is the memory that lingers even now.
as some of you will know, i used to work in a kiddie prison. the government doesn’t call it that of course, but potato potahtoe … it is what it is … a fucking prison as far as i’m concerned.
when i started at this hell hole, i was bright eyed and busy tailed and was ready to take on the world. i wasn’t ignorant but was slightly naive.
realistically though: i was still colonised.
i believed the negative stats that say our people are at the bottom of the heap and the only way we can change that is by assimilating. again, the government cunts won’t state it like this … but it is what it is.
i went into youth justice with the notion that getting them kiddie fuckers early meant that there’d be less damage done. my theory was sound. i hadn’t factored in though, that the powers that be, didn’t and don’t, actually give a shit.
anyway … the memory i had was of a young man that i had sectioned. when i say i, i should be saying the government entity that i worked for. i followed the instructions i was given and did what was required of my position.
what lingered … lingers … in my memory and my gutt though, is how it made me feel and what it did to my body.
it was the first time it like 20 odd years that i had been that sick. true, my health was declining over all at this point … but i got tonsillitis for the first time in like years. so bad, my throat swelled shut and i couldn’t speak.
at the same time my gutt turned and i was vomiting.
little hard to vomit out of a swollen throat. enough said bout that.
and i knew in the pitt of my stomach that i had done something that i neither believed in or wanted to do.
without going into the gory details, sectioning this young man, in my opinion, was about managing him not helping him. it was about getting him out of the way and using the power of the crown to do so.
and i was the instrument that did it.
i had to go to court and back up the statements that were included in the report. and no shit, i could barely speak. not that they gave a fuck.
i remember looking at this kid in the box, thinking: fuck, i don’t even want to be here and i don’t believe any of this shit. and then looking at him and him looking at me like i was betraying him.
i betrayed me really. as well as him.
i didn’t act on my instinct and on my beliefs because they were all up the shit.
honestly, our system was not and is not equipped to deal with young people with mental health issues. aside from the mono cultural bullshit they have to go through that puts them in the position of being misunderstood in the first place – ultimately winding up in a facility like this one … they then have to navigate health issues that this system doesn’t understand and isn’t designed to assist with.
excuses aside, this was one of those moments that had me wanting to head out the door. but i had spent so much time and money studying – i had sacrificed so much to be here, i lamented.
and in the meantime it was destroying me, literally, from the inside out.
what i understood this morning regarding this memory, was i hadn’t just sectioned one of Our kids, one of My kids … i had gone against everything that i believed in … i had silenced myself and done as i was told. i had advocated for the wrong side.
i had silenced my own still small voice for the sake of time, effort, money and sacrifice.
i sacrificed my voice.
literally.
my resolution this morning, after this long-winded realisation …
i’ll never do this again.
figuratively or physically.
no matter the cost, i won’t ever be on the wrong side of my own values ever again.
kpm © : ig @kpm-artist
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