Living in Ignorance – Juvenile in Justice

So, there’s a reason this post is going up the day of class. I’m not usually a procrastinator but I was honestly waiting as long as I could to do this assignment.

I have lived most of my life believing ignorance is bliss. Not only lived, but practiced as well. I absolutely hate politics and the news so until recently, I would turn my head at every newspaper headline, tune out of every political conversation, turn off all news stations. I wanted to live blissfully in my ignorant bubble, pretending nothing was wrong. See guys, I’m a pessimist, a glass half-empty kind of girl. Not on purpose but just because one bit of bad news can send me tumbling into a “why do we even try to make the world a better place” mood. Anyway, enough about me. This was so y’all understood why this was difficult to read / will be difficult to talk about.

I cried. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed to admit that I shed more than a few tears flipping through this book. Yes, I was in the library and received strange looks, but as I said, not ashamed. Would you like to know when the tears started? Before the foreword, when I read the cost of a detention center. Would you like to know when I started sobbing? At the first mention of suicide watch. I love children more than anything in this world and I just couldn’t stand it.

This book just made me think of my blissful bubble of ignorance and about the privilege I never knew I had growing up. One of the reasons I am so emotional is because most of these kids are born into this life, it’s all they ever knew. They have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters in jail or in gangs and they have just accepted that fact. We saw a picture of a ten-year-old boy in there for stabbing a classmate because they were talking bad about his mom. A seventeen year old with two kids. A child on suicide watch and not trusted with clothes in fear that he will hang himself. I read and see and feel these things and I just want to crawl back into my bubble.

I don’t know. What do you guys think? I’ve always been emotional but I’m curious as to how “normal” people process things like this. People who probably hear bad news everyday and are aware of the sad state our country and world is in. Does this affect you at all? Do you say, “Wow that’s shit” and move on? I’m not saying that as if it’s a bad thing, I’m just curious.

Whatever. Expect some tears in class y’all.