Drop Dirty

L was locked up this past Monday. It is the third time I have seen her in detention since I started two years ago. All for the same reason: running away. So I ask her the obvious question: why do you run? Some days she says, "I don't like being home" yet moments later she cries because all she wants is to be home. Other days it's because "I'm going to get in trouble if I go home" yet she sits in detention in the situation she wants to avoid. And there is "I wanted to hang out with my friends" well, she has friends in detention, not an adult though that takes the time to listen, care, and act upon what has been told. So that's where I sat last night for nearly an hour and a half. Really though, she runs because she's scared (and she knows it, she admitted that to me last night).

Last night she was most scared about the fact that there are three hours of her life she cannot remember and about six to nine that she has reliable but vague bits of because that's the night she was drugged and raped. "All of them suck but this time was the most bearable." She went on to tell me the first time she was raped, she was fully sober and not on drugs and she remembers everything. The second one she was drunk and on drugs and though she remembers, she was numb at the time. This time, she's scared because though she didn't have to consciously experience it, and today she's (hopefully and not hopefully) going to drop dirty at her blood and drug test.

The blood test she wants because she wants to know if she caught something from this complete stranger. If she drops dirty (has a positive drug test) she's hopeful that maybe she'll be able to put the pieces together and find out what went on. Hopefully she'll turn negative so she doesn't have to face more charges of drug possession.

Why is it that our system would charge this girl for taking drugs she didn't know she took? This guy got her a drink (and it was non-alcoholic) and the next thing she knows she's feeling light-headed, dizzy, and a little loopy. She didn't take it, she didn't know it was there, yet she'll be charged. It may or may not be there because, as I learned from this former drug dealer, some drugs rush through your body faster than others. She's hoping that a spinal tap, if not a normal drug test, will show tell her what she wants to know.

That's just a part of this girl's story. And some may say that this isn't the worst, that there are more disturbing things that she told me last night. Pray though...pray that her pieces will come together, that her mom (a sex-abuse counselor) will treat her more like a daughter than a client, that she won't be charged, that truth will be known, and that someone (perhaps me) to be there for her to help her voice be heard.