I know exactly what is like to leave my home, my friends, my family, and everything familiar to me all too well. I have been in that situation seventeen times in the last six years. I think I will talk about the first time.
I was nine. It was the first day of indoor soccer. I was extremely happy to tell my mother, Heather, all about it! When it came time to leave, I was expecting my mother to pick me up, but instead, my caseworkers from Child and Family Services were there to drive me back to the only home I knew. I didn’t care! I just had the best day I have ever had!
When I got home, I could smell the thick smoke in the air, Mother has been chain-smoking again. As soon as I saw her on the couch, her head in her hands, I knew something was wrong.
“Hi Mumma. Are you okay?” I asked, even though I knew she wasn’t. She looked up at me and wept as she lit up yet another cigarette.
My mother explained to me a week before this day that there is trouble going on with our family, that my grandparents have turned on us and I might have to leave for a few weeks. It all sank in. I was going to leave for a while. I cried. I have never been away from my mother more than a few days at a time, let alone weeks!
When my mom finally told me what was going on, I cried. Even though I was only nine at the time, I had the mentality of a thirteen or fourteen year old. I had to with the situation I was in. I understood everything she was saying to be, the judge, the court, foster-care. I was scared. I thought, who was I going to live with while my mom got better?
I packed my bags. I included my toy door alarm that I got for Christmas just weeks before, my clothes, and my mothers blanket. I took the blanket because it smelt of cigarettes and my mothers Victoria’s Secret's Love Spell perfume. Cigarettes are a strange comforting smell to me.
My lawyer, Martha, took me two hours away from my home to a small town called Litchfield. The foster-parent’s name was Patrina Felts. She was a very mean and ignorant lady. She took my blanket away from me. She said she was allergic to the smell of cigarette smoke. She washed my mothers blanket and gave it back to me. The familiar smell of cigarettes and perfume was washed away by the smell of cotton breeze. I was furious.
Patrina was also abusive, almost as much as my parents. She would make us put our hands on the ground and she would hold the vacuum over our hands while it ran.
I missed my mother so much. I missed snuggling her when I was upset. I couldn’t stand being away from her! I just kept telling myself that it would be a couple more days and she would come save me. Day after day, I just kept saying to everyone that my mother was coming to pick me up. After about four years, I realized that she wasn’t. She wasn’t going to come pick me up. I was just so naive that I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to think my mother could be the one to take me away from this place called foster care. I was sort of disappointed in her, to think that my own mother wouldn’t come to my help when I needed her most.
It was about four and a half years into the time I was in foster care and I was given the news that I was not able to go back to my home, that my mother had signed a paper saying that she “didn’t want me anymore.” I was very sad, depressed even. I didn’t know what to do. I decided that if my mother didn’t want me, I didn’t want her. I rejected my mother. She apparently wanted to go do things and not think about her kids.
So as you can see, I know what it is like to lose everything I had. I have been through i many times.
