This makes me so sick

I thought the last story was horrific. But this? Words fail me.

Toddler Fatally Burned, Put Into Oven by Sibling: Documents

Police believe J'zyra was one of four children who had been left alone Monday by their mother and her boyfriend when the girl and two of her siblings began playing with the oven. CPS says the couple left the four kids home alone without telling a grandmother who lived in the same apartment complex.

FATHER OF SIBLINGS OF TODDLER BURNED TO DEATH TRIES TO FIND HIS CHILDREN

Court records show Price's two kids, just three years old, told investigators that one of them put the baby in the oven, and the other turned it on. Records show the children told CPS workers they made the oven "hot", and that the baby was kicking the oven door while inside. Records also show Thompson tried CPR when she got home. But it was too late, the child had multiple burns.

CPS said no suitable relatives can care for the three surviving children from the home, so they are currently in foster care. Thompson also has an older child who lives with his father. In addition, she is seven months pregnant with her current boyfriend's child. Thompson apparently also drove the kids without a license nor car seats.

Man, this kid didn't have a chance

More Details Released In Toddler's Death

Before 23-month-old Cyrus Belt was thrown from a Honolulu bridge down upon the highway by a neighbour who may be mentally ill and a crystal methamphetamine addict, his life was already a shambles. His father is in a correctional facility serving a drug-related sentence. His mother has lost custody of the child more than once due to drug use, and her boyfriend was stupid enough to leave the child with a man who was apparently unhinged so he could work on his truck, since the grandfather was sleeping (he'd already wandered away once due to the latter).

The only blessing--if you can call it that--is that he died in the fall, not from having been struck by at least two vehicles, including a truck. I'm sure those drivers will have those moments burnt into their memory forever.

Isn't it strange?

I spend a lot of my time trying to avoid being adult and responsible. Yet I carry deep-set feelings of responisbility for several things I experienced as a child, even though I was in no way to blame. Things like sexual abuse, never measuring up enough to be wanted, my parents' divorce, that kind of thing.

I'm learning to take responsibility for all the little and big things I should. But maybe I need to let go of the guilt and responsibility that I have left over from my childhood.

Maybe I try to avoid more responsibility because of the feelings I associate with it.

I know now that I was a bright, trusting, and lovable child that most people would have loved to have as their own. A lot of trust was broken, I felt terribly unlovable, and I took refuge in being bright but never really developed it as I should have. My emotional growth stopped when I was very young. My intellectual growth stopped as a teenager. I've come very far in getting them further down the pipeline. But I wonder if I hadn't had some of the experiences I had--if I'd been encouraged and nurtured, and most of all, not harmed, what kind of person I would be.

I don't know, maybe we grow and evolve more in the presence of adversity. But we also grow when nurtured. I can't ever get the nurturing I could have had, but I can nurture myself. So that's two ways to grow. So now it's time to plant some roots and flourish, don't you think?