My Adoption

Age: 11----Location: In the court, in front of a judge

I had taken a day out of school to go to court to get adopted. Several days earlier, MamaJohnson had asked me if I wanted to be adopted. I was caught off guard with her bluntness and lack of elaboration. After all, this question had come out of the blue. But I knew that as fast as this question came was as fast as the chance of being kicked out of the house. So my mouth said “yes” as I knew that I loved her and was comfortable with the life I had.

Background information: I lived in a foster home, this foster home since I was one and this was my home. This house, this place had also been home to many others, many came, many left. They disappear without a trace as I remember only their face and little fond memories of them. I was afraid of disappearing to a place like them which I was ignorant to. Leaving would have destroyed me as this place i called home began to define who I was; a sister, a daughter, a loved one.

These thoughts began to associate with what the answer “no” really meant, so when the judge asked me if I wanted to be adopted by Ms. Marie Johnson, I said “yes.” ...

And then it was over. We drove home from the busy building as I anticipated me taking of the big puffy dress which I was forced to wear. The car ride was quiet, strangly, even as we pulled to the front of the house. I jumped out the car looking and waiting for MamaJohnson to open the door to the house. We both walked through the house slowly, looking to see if a conversation would occur. But It didnt and I didn't want to talk anywayz-I couldn't. I mean, I felt powerless in this situation, like I had little control over my own life.... I avoided eye contact and I stayed aloof as I walked through the house and into my room.

...And in my bedroom, which had became a place of solitude, I looked for a place of Life that wasn’t so fast paced... Daydreams filled my head and I picked up where I left off before-- of a life where I was apart of a “traditional” nuclear family with two parents that loved me, a sister that protected me and a younger one that looked up to me......

Books and Media on Foster Care

Books

*On Their Own: What happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System

also a Video similiar to that is "*Aging Out"- it is a documentary, highly reccommended to check out

*Shattered Bones : The Color of Child Welfare- by Dorothy Roberts ,a book I am currently reading

*A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown

*Bad Girl by Abigail Vona

*Finding Fish by Antowne Fisher

and of course, the movie " *Antowne Fisher"

I am A Writer

The pen is my voice. It talks for me as I remains silent, too afraid to speak, too tired to scream. My writings matters to me especially when nothing else in life seems to matters at all. It has been a key to my resilience as it became a way to vent and express my deeper innermost feelings and emotions. Within foster care and life frequents test, writing has got me through it. Childhood diaries to college applications; writing got me to where I am now. When no one listened and my feelings were invalid, when love was just four letters just the same as hurt, I wrote before I spoke or told or even felt empowered to do so. Poetry and such, short stories and sometimes longer, all told of a little girl, who wish to understand why she was out of place and why things seem to be always her fault.

A Story of A Little Girl

It was her fault her mom tried to kill her; maybe she cried too much. The little girl hates to cry now. And it was her fault too that her sister was took away, and her fault also that her foster mom screamed at her, and her fault, that everyone seem to know that she was a foster child, bad, and a mess because she cried too much. She never explained it, she just cried too much. She tried to fix things, fix life to receive love, did what was asked of her and cleaned up because she was a messy, messy child. She vacuumed the carpet, the real way, moved everything, and placed the furniture in order. But then she heard a scream, but maybe it was out of joy, proudness because she has proven herself.

“ You moved my shirt” her foster sister said. The little girl knew it was her fault. “ Why you moved your sister shirt?” her foster mom says. The little girl explains herself “ I was cleaning up and I folded the shirt, it’s in her dresser. I was just trying to help, she didn’t even look in her dresser did she?” Her foster sister still whines in the background and her foster mom say “ You tried to hide her stuff talking about you trying to clean up, You ain’t never tried to clean up before.” “ I was just trying to help!” the little girl screamed, now crying. “ WELL don’t help out no more! What’s the point of helping when you messing things up?!?!?” her foster mom says.

The little girl remain collective, she knew what she had to do, she waited till everything had cooled down and everyone had left. She went to the closet and grab a plastic bag. She cried quietly, knowing that it was her fault again, she tried and tried and tried to not be a bad girl, she was ruining their lives, and she loved them so much, how could she continue to fuck up their lives more. The little girl was willing to sacrifice her life as she placed the plastic bag over her head and she held the back of it. ………………………………………

Foster mom “Where is [little girl name] at?” She finds the girl still huffing and puffing in the closet and makes her take the bag off and calls her stupid. She punishes her and makes her go to bed. The little girl never wanted to die anyway, and she goes to bed crying, knowing once more than it was her fault. Her foster mom tells her when she wakes up that she didn’t tell DCFS on her because she didn’t want the little girl to be sent away. But ironic-ly, the little girl wanted to be sent away, from that house where everything was her fault and where she cried, never spoke, but wrote instead. She never got her wish. The little girl was eleven when this happen and this was her second attempt to get out the house.

I know this little girl, I know she use to injured herself when she was around seven. I know she told her teacher that she wasn’t being feed when she was in the second grade. But the teacher didn’t believe her and the little girl was lying anyways about that part. The little girl was lying in order to get out of that house. She didn’t know her to explain her hurt because her bruises weren’t bad enough and her biggest hurt was emotional.

The little girl grew a little older and tried to run away, but she was too smart to go further than the end of the block where the dangerous streets waited for her. She instead went back home and had dinner at the enemy’s table and ate and ate, slept and slept, wrote and wrote. She needed to leave and she found that school, sports, and activities got her out the house, so girl scout, JROTC, Police Explorers, Academic Decathlon, Camp, etc was things she did, over and over again.

She screamed at home, started mess because at least in this it was truly her fault, at least if she was a jerk then it truly was the reason why everyone was mean to her, why people seem to leave her in life or not accept her or understand her….push people away before they could hurt you . Build walls; crying hurted too much for the little girl because it was always her fault that it happened.

The little girl grew up, did well in anyone’s standards, and went to college and everything. And as she sits at graduation, the guest speaker congratulates the graduates and then gives credit to the parents and teacher for rearing the graduates to succeed. The little girl, now a grown woman, is upset because the one time she really wants things to be her fault, it is miscredited and as her foster, now adopted mom hugs her, the grown woman cries and cries feeling like a little girl once more