My Side Of The Story: Entering Foster care

I went to live with Diana, her mother, and her stepfather in their home temporarily until the case with my father was settled. Diana was willing to share her room with me, and they had put a new bed in there for me. Diana also attended Colonel Magruder High, so I could go to the same school as well. I got lucky.

They enrolled me in therapy, saying that all foster children were required to be in therapy of some sort, and I got my first therapist-the first out of around thirty that I'd later come across.

Though I was here, I still wanted to continue the program I was with-the mail-based Art Instruction Schools. My parents actually offered to continue to pay for it, and that made me lose sleep because of guilt. I couldn't say no. I wasn't stupid enough to keep thinking that I could pay for the program on my own. But I hated myself for accepting their help, and the fact that they were willing to give it killed me.

At the same time, I wanted to continue with my music. That was my way of obtaining immortality-my way of making sure that I could make some sort of impact, I could be someone with a voice, influence, that people would care about long, long after death. However, being under eighteen, I couldn't do anything without parental support and of course, money. I had trouble asking people that I felt incredibly indebted to for even more, so I tried to get a job.

Then I found out that my parents had not taken care of a single thing pertaining to my immigration status.

I didn't even have a social security number, which I found out after I was turned down by the local Burger King for not having one-and not only that, I didn't have a green card or anything. So I went to speak to the court about that, and as I'd soon find out, that kind of thing can take years to settle, and costs hundreds of dollars. Later, I would struggle doing basic things like opening up bank accounts. What were they thinking? Jesus, if I had turned eighteen and went on living the way my parents wanted me to...I shudder to think of it. And I regret to inform you that even as I'm writing this at twenty (six years after this) I still am not a citizen.

Okay, no job. No studio time. No money. That was alright.

Because I instead became obsessed with songwriting. During that time I wrote two songs every day. I was a speed-writer, and I didn't go back and fix things because I believed that would tamper with the raw emotion present in the song.

It became harder and harder to go to school and concentrate. There's something about having this kind of interruption during your childhood that makes it impossible for you to return to the way you were before that. I couldn't go to class, sit there, pay attention and do work like I used to. I couldn't look at my peers the way I used to. I couldn't interest myself in any extracurricular activities.

Guess what I did as I tuned out my teachers?

I wrote songs. Sometimes I'd skip class altogether and go to the bathrooms where other kids went to smoke and get high. Except I didn't smoke or get high. I wasted paper and killed trees. I wrote song after song after song and used up notebook after notebook.

By this time, I'd already been absent from school for two months, and had been neglecting my schoolwork on top of skipping class before I ran away. Remember in the intro when I said I'd failed all my classes? That was when it happened.

Jesus, I was so glad I didn't live with my parents. They would've killed me for that. You're talking about the people who slapped me for getting B's-a failing report card was a death sentence. Soojin the failure-and I'd just shake my head and go write another song.

Around this time, I think having to share her room and her mother began to take its toll on Diana.

She stopped talking to me. When we walked to the bus and out of the bus, she made sure to distance herself. And if I was in the room she never came in. I think it hadn't really hit her at fourteen what it would be to help someone out-she didn't think about what it'd be like. She just felt sorry for me.

And now that she'd had a taste of it, Diana didn't like it. She was used to being the only child and she didn't want to help me anymore. I think she wanted me out because I'd start having arguments with her mother about simple things like her TV. If she'd wanted to watch something else, she could've just told me-I didn't understand why instead of just doing that, she went to her mother.

"So how do you think Diana feels? You think it's fair for her to have to share her room and TV?" Her mother said one day.

My temper got to me and I regret to inform you that I did raise my voice. "So, if she felt that way why didn't she just talk to me?!"

After the argument, she shut the door behind her. I threw a water bottle at the door in frustration and her stepfather came in the room and started shouting at me in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, but I'd learned enough about it in school to make out bits and pieces of what he was saying.

"...if you wanna do things like that, do it with your mother and father, not here!"

Because of Diana's change of heart and me throwing a water bottle-which scared them, I think-I had to get out of there. After a month my worker Nancy was given a notice for her to find me another home.

I don't make any excuses for what happened there. I should've been calmer and more rational. But I was under a lot of stress, and I, too, was only fourteen at the time. And unfortunately it clouded my judgment, and my temper just became worse.

"Do it with your mother and father."

He may not have meant to hurt me that much, but those words stuck with me. Throughout all my years in foster care, they were the only family that had taken me in not because it was something DSS had called them for but because they really worried about me. And even to them, I was an outsider.

I'd later find out that foster parents got paid to do what they did-per child, every month, and their salaries varied depending on what type of care they did, counting this as extra income. Though I didn't know it at that point, that is when my bias against foster homes started.

Some of them will tell you on the first day that they meet you that they "love you", but that's not true. They turn around and exhibit give too much proof that no matter how much they try to lie about it, their foster children are never on the same footing as their real children.

Now, adoptive kids can be an exception. The difference between adoption and foster care is that foster care is temporary, a foster childs' legal guardian is the state and they do get paid to take care of you. Adoption is permanent, and it is a legal agreement to make yourself this child's guardian, not the state, and while incentives can be received, you don't get paid regularly like foster parents and this child is basically your own. Foster children are not the same. At all.

While I do not doubt that it's very possible to have genuine concern and care for a foster child like any human being would for another, if you say that you see them the same way you see your children, you are a liar. If that's true, you would adopt them, and you wouldn't toss out foster children so easily like trash, for the stupidest reasons (one girl I met got thrown out of her foster home for not being the same religion as her foster parents).

My next foster home was with a rich, white family in the suburbs whom, while very well-off, were ungrateful spoiled brats. I say that without hesitation. The mother was especially notable, the way she constantly shouted at the children-including her own-about how "disgusting" they were.

The father was rarely home, for he was always working. The mother was a housewife-not a good one, for she spent most of her time in bed watching TV while the teenagers were mostly self-sufficient. But the most notable thing was their combined bullying of their lastest foster child, Amanda.

Yes, the foster mother joined in and helped the kids bully this poor girl, who would stand there quietly and take the abuse.

"Why are you so quiet? Can you talk?" they'd sneer out back while taking care of the garden their father made them work on. "No she doesn't know how to talk, guys. She's mute."

And they-including the parents-would laugh. Now I wondered-I had been quiet as well, what would they think about me? Was this something they did to all the new foster kids to screen them?

I'd think of my past experiences with bullying, and I decided right then and there: I will never allow them to treat me the way they treat Amanda. Never. I'd rather die.

So I brought it up one night during dinner.

"Well, from what I heard, Amanda deserves it." The father replied.

"How could someone ever deserve that?"

Their mother really threw a fit with this. "Hey! He wasn't being mean! You need to watch your mouth!"

"I need to watch my mouth?" I scoffed. "What did I say that was rude? Amanda doesn't deserve what you people are doing to her. Point blank."

"...Okay."

So the next day, we all awoke to go to school-but I didn't get to go to the bus stop. She had me get in her car, talking about how she could do whatever and say whatever because she was an adult and I had no right to question how she ran her household. If she thought it was okay to bully Amanda, it was okay, and I couldn't say anything.

I wanted to slap the shit out of that bitch. But I didn't.

She drove me to Social Services (she hadn't even put a notice in yet, but she'd get her money with some other foster kid) and dropped me off with my social worker, after two weeks at her house.

"Every place you go, there's a problem! Why is that?" Nancy would pinch my cheeks and taunt me. Thank God I had enough resolve to ignore it. And that night I was returned to the emergency shelter, Open Door.

Though I accept responsibility for what happened in Diana's home, I will not accept any for this one. They had no excuse to bully around that poor child and abuse their power over her as adults, and I will not apologize for speaking out, especially as I was not rude about it until they started snapping at me.