Country Boys

I'm half-watching an episode of Frontline, and the story tonight is about a couple of teenage boys who are living very, very hard lives in Appalachia. One of the boys has no parents to speak of - apparently when he was 12, his father walked into a strip club with an AK47, shot and killed his stepmother (who worked there) and then turned the gun on himself. The other boy is in some special education classes, and he does have parents - kind of. The boy talks candidly about his father, who is a non-functional alcoholic, can't hold a job, etc. And it struck me as I was listening... most of the people speaking in this story have very thick accents, a lot of twang to their voices. And I noticed how carefully the second boy is speaking. He speaks slowly, deliberately, in measured tones and with very precise diction. In short, he appears to be going to a great deal of effort to supress his own accent. He can't help but have one, I would imagine, but he's just so careful. And that, above everything else, is what grips me.

It's amazing, how some people can struggle through hardships of various kinds and come out of it relatively unscathed. Well, really I guess nobody ever comes out of things like this unscathed, but some certainly remain (or perhaps become?) well-adjusted in life. And I wonder how people have the strength to do it. Me, I've been through some rough spots over the last... oh... twelve years or so. In fact, I think I can accurately say that I've had a few really good months in that span of time, but the majority of it has been a struggle, both external and internal. But I'm a grown woman, and moreover, I'm a mom, who has to maintain some degree of control, of strength, of... I don't know, maybe fortitude is a good word? These boys, they're just boys. Just very young about-to-be-men, who in some ways are already required to be men. At least I got to have a childhood, and a very good one. I was well-provided-for, had plenty of support, good role models of both genders, a good background in general. (I know, what the hell happened?!?!) Yet still it's been difficult for me. How much more difficult must it be, for boys like this? How hard must it be to be 16, hyper-aware of your family's inadequacies, struggling to overcome a perhaps misapplied label of learning disabilities, and struggling to supress something as simple and intrinsic as an accent, as the same accent used by the people who surround you...

I know a few people who have "come up hard." Some of them, I know a lot of the stories and a lot of the past. Others, it's small hints, parts of stories, whatever it isn't too painful to tell. But off the top of my head, I can think of four people who've come out of some pretty tough situations, who have turned out to be some pretty impressive people - people I admire, whose company I enjoy. As for my own struggles, well, I never wanted my own resilience, my own strength, to be gained this way. I look back every now and then and remember the girl I was when I first moved to Texas, when I first left the proverbial nest. I liked that girl; she was happy, optimistic, ambitious, ready to conquer the world. But she was also somewhat sheltered... somewhat fragile... certainly naive... not particularly strong. The girl I used to be is more fun, possibly more likeable - but the woman I've become, is the one I'd rather be with when the chips are down.