#fostercareawareness

Every time I think I have escaped the claws of foster care, I am brutally reminded that there is no escaping. There is no forgetting and moving on. I went to buy a new car this weekend because the one I bought off Facebook marketplace four years ago is barely hanging on these days. I’m looking at doing an EMT program 50 miles from home, so I need a safe car to get me there and home every Saturday from August to December. This is my first “big girl purchase” although my first car was bought for $8,000 cash at the age of 18. I was going to finance this car, because unfortunately, I don’t have $8,000 cash this time. Apparently for your first loan, the banks want a co-signer to make sure they’re going to get paid. Who am I supposed to ask to co-sign? My parents??? Once again, I am stuck because I don’t have anyone. I’m doing this alone in a world that isn’t designed for lonely people. I don’t even know what to do. I can’t dissociate my way through this one folks.

This last month with my therapist we have been working on trauma. The older I get, the more I realize how much I am still affected by my childhood abuse. I get frustrated with myself for not being able to be “normal”. Little things like getting overstimulated at work because of noise, or people touching me. Having really intense episodes of depression on a weekly basis. It feels like my brain is broken, like there’s something chemically and physically wrong with my brain. My therapist has brought up some really good points that I hope will help me be kinder to myself. First is that when people go through years of trauma, and have complex post traumatic stress disorder, there a chemical shift in the brain. Nobody goes through trauma and comes out the same as they were before or as people who haven’t been through that trauma. So it makes sense that I struggle with things, my brain is different, and instead of being angry with myself for something that wasn’t my fault, I’m learning how to adapt my life to my needs, which is difficult. The second thing is that I was 12 when I left that house. I’m 21 now. I tell myself that it’s been almost 10 years, I should be fine by now, I should’ve healed and learned how to let go of that pain. She said that those twelve years make up 57% of my life right now. The trauma didn’t end when I ended up I foster care. I’ve been on my own as an adult for 3% of my life, meaning I’ve only spent 3% of my life working towards healing from that 57% percent. It sounds silly to say that I should be fine when I hear the numbers. I know that healing doesn’t have an end, there is no maximum amount of healing you can do in your life because to heal is to grow, and to grow is to be alive. I will be healing for the rest of my life which sounds both exhausting and reassuring. I have the rest of my life to heal, I don’t have to, and I can’t do it all right now. I’ve been putting unrealistic expectations on myself and it’s been exhausting. So now I have to learn how to slow down and go at a pace that feels okay because that’s what it takes to truly heal. I can’t bully myself into feeling okay. It sounds stupid but I have to be gentle with myself and love myself while I do this. Maybe you needed that reminder too. Healing takes time and it takes patience. There’s no timeline or due date, it’s just a process and sometimes the process looks different at various points in your life and that’s okay. It’s supposed to. We’re going to get there one day.

Some good things have started happening, and I’m finally settled in enough to talk about them. I swallowed my pride and reached out to my old Chafee worker. Chafee is a program that helps foster youth 15-23 with resources, information, and other things to help them be successful on their own. I had a falling out with them when I turned 18, but I couldn’t carry everything by myself anymore and I needed help. They were able to get me a housing voucher for a new apartment closer to work, I moved in last week. The move was stressful, I still have a lot of anxiety with picking up and going somewhere new and I think that is a result of foster care. I am starting EMT classes in two weeks, and I am both really excited and terrified. I’ve been talking with my therapist about a lot things, and she signed up for some classes so she can better understand what it’s like to have ADHD as an adult and how it impacts someone’s life. I have an appointment to get back on ADHD meds now that my heart issues are being managed. I took a whole week off of work to adjust to the move and to be honest, I really needed a break. Things at work have been really hard because I stood up for myself when I was being mistreated and as a result about half the people at my job now hate me and do everything they can to make my life miserable. Management knows and they won’t do anything no matter how people quit due to the bullying that’s going on. I’m trying to apply for new jobs but things kind of suck right now. I, for the first time in my life, have a boyfriend. We’ve been kind of sort of together for 3 years, and it’s really complicated but we love each other and now it’s official. I’m excited and terrified again, because in my experience, people rarely stay and I don’t want to get hurt again. Younger me would be horrified to hear current me admit that I think this man is worth the risk of being hurt. I’m in a really interesting point in my life, completely unprepared but also ready for new things. There’s still highs and lows but in this moment I’m okay, and that’s enough.

I moved in with my foster parents when I was 15. I don’t live with them anymore, but my apartment is five minutes away from their house and I still see them all the time. I don’t always vocalize to my foster mom when I’m struggling because I know she has a house full of kids to worry about, and I don’t want to burden her. I swear she has this sixth sense though, because whenever I start spiraling it’s like she knows. If it’s been a few days since we’ve talked, she’ll call me and check on me, or invite me over for dinner. She’s even driven over here to pick me up to run errands with them and get lunch, just us. Sometimes I look through our texts and it’s impossible to not see how much she loves me, just from those texts. The other day I finally told her and my foster dad a little bit about what I’ve been struggling with, and they just listened to me vent, and they reassured me, and gave me advice. I’m not her blood, but she knows me better than anyone and I think that’s how she always knows, even without me telling her. I don’t know how she does it, but I’m so grateful for both of them. I know that no matter how messy my life gets, I can always come home to them, no questions asked. This is what foster care is supposed to be. I moved out almost three years ago, but they still save my seat at the dinner table. They don’t adopt kids, they never wanted us to feel like some of us were better than others, and they can’t take all of us. In the 39 years they’ve been foster parents, they’ve raised over 300 kids, but they make sure that I know I will always have a place in their lives. So when I think about what love looks like, that’s what I picture, them.

Every now and then I am reminded how hard it is being an adult foster youth. I’m only 21, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. This week was really hard. I got sick on Monday while I was at work, but I have this fear of letting people down so I toughed it out. I got home and I had a fever of 103. I took some Tylenol but I can’t afford groceries right now so I don’t have any cold medicine or anything. I took Tuesday off of work thinking I needed a day to just recover. I mean, I’m working full time, taking three classes one of which is a two and half hour in person class twice a week after work so I thought maybe I was overdoing it right? But I’m pushing myself physically to avoid what’s going on mentally and yes I’m in therapy I know that’s not good but it’s what’s keeping me alive for right now. Anyway I go back to work on Wednesday but I have a cough and a headache and I just don’t feel great but I already took a day off I don’t want to make my boss mad. After work I take an at home Covid test my foster mom gave me and it’s negative, so I go to urgent care because day three of having a fever that’s now reached 103.5 and I don’t know what’s wrong. Urgent care does a Covid test that I know is going to be negative because I just took one, and they send me home. So if they sent me home I must just be overthinking this right? Maybe it’s not that bad. But I can’t work until the fever is gone and nothing is making the fever come down the cough is triggering my asthma so on Friday my foster mom takes me to the ER and there I find out I have pneumonia. They rehydrate me because I have been unable to keep anything down and sweating so much that water does nothing for me, and they give some antibiotics and I’m able to go home while they send meds to the pharmacy and finally I’m feeling like it’ll be okay. But the Walgreens they sent the meds to is closed on weekends, and I’m not supposed to wait until Monday so I call and ask them to send it to a different location which I find out halfway through Saturday the pharmacy is actually closed. So I call back again and ask them to send it down the street to Walmart but then they never call in the meds. So I ask my foster mom to call them for me and ask them to send the meds because it’s almost Sunday and I’m starting to feel like crap again and the fever is gone but I can’t breathe and my inhaler is expired and they were supposed to send a new one. She called and they said they would send them and she said she’d pick them up so I spent today cleaning in preparation for feeling better once I get my meds and once I’m done cleaning I sit on my floor and I start crying because I feel so freaking alone. Which is stupid because my foster mom has been taking care of me this whole time, sending me food and taking me to the ER but I can’t help but feel guilty because it’s not her job anymore to take care of me and she’s got a family at home, six kids counting on her but I don’t have anyone else to go to for help. I’m 21, I’m single, my bio family has left me again and it’s just been a really long week you know? It’s not like I have friends I can’t talk to, I lost them all when the assault at Wendy’s happened so I’m just sitting here fucking crying because I’m tired and it sounds very stupid but I’ve realized that it’s nobody’s job to help me. I’m in this alone and usually I can pretend that doesn’t hurt but not this week, not right now. But that’s just what happens when you age out. You’re alone unless you can find people and apparently I’m not very good at finding other people and I don’t know why. Anyway, I just needed a moment I guess. I feel like 12 year old me sitting outside my cottage at residential wondering if I’ll always be alone. I wish I could tell her the answer is no, but at this point in time I don’t have the answer she needs so for now I’m just crying with her.