The Blessings of the Dark

I recall one foster brother whom I really did not know well because he was young and beginning his cycle of housing assignments when I was close to aging out of the system but I grew weary of his game of throwing his feces at people and I disciplined him. His reaction was to stop throwing his feces at people at least for the remaining time I had in the system and then time went on and almost all of us lost touch. Several years later I was working as a Behavioral Health Technician in a private psychiatric hospital when the system began buzzing about a big black guy who just came in the hospital who has sworn to hurt anyone who looks at him. I was coming on shift and noticed a person setting themselves up in the seclusion room which was a VERY odd occurrence as this is where people usually tried to stay out of. Details of the occurrence are sketchy but what matters is that at some point I went to the water fountain and found myself eye to eye with this person and it was the foster brother that I had disciplined all those years ago! Our reconnection was wonderful and we hugged like the lost brothers we were. Our banter was as lively and full of “colorful metaphors” and everyone was in shock. We reminisced about the lost years and I began to apologize for my disciplinary actions all those years ago. He stopped my apology saying that I really helped him and he always wished to see me again so that he could thank me. I was confused by this and he said that when I disciplined him for his actions, I told him that he was better than this and he needed to stop this nonsense. That was the first time in his life, he said, that someone treated him like a person instead of telling him him that he was a stupid, worthless “offensive racial slur” and it helped him more than I would ever know. I said I was sorry it doesn’t seem like it did enough to which he replied… imagine where I’d be without it.