I was in foster care from age 16 until I aged out at 18. My mother was an abusive alcoholic, and my father was an alcoholic who - while not abusive - couldn't protect me from my mother. When I was a child, I took the beatings quietly. They were only once or twice a year, whenever I managed to make my mom really mad. Special occasions, you know? Then the alcoholism got worse, and so did the abuse, and I found I couldn't take any more as I grew older.
Started calling 911 as a teenager whenever she'd beat me. They took her away, and away, and away - 72 hour holds in the psych ward, longer stays in a mental hospital with rehab or a halfway hosue afterwards, I think one weekend in actual jail. But she'd always get released, and she'd always drink. Finally, the police took me away too. I spent four confusing hours in an interrogation room, left alone except for the pathetic comfort of some MTV droning on the TV they brought in. Then processing was done, and they took me back to my home to hastily gather what possessions I could into some black trash bags. My father looked on, dumbfounded, dazed, unable to do anything to keep me. I remember protesting that I had a nice set of luggage in my closet, but the cops told me that for some reason, I had to use these demoralizing trash bags. It was this morbidly amusing manifestation of my life and everything I knew quite literally going into the trash.
The first home was sketchy. It was late by the time I arrived, and they didn't even really welcome me much or show me around - just walked me up to a dark room where two young foster children were sleeping in bunk beds and pointed me in. I remember waking up needing to use the restroom in the night and not having the faintest idea where anything was. Not the biggest problem, but on top of already being beaten that day, taken by the cops, and shuttled to a new home? It reduced me to tears. Then, the next day - my very first day in the home - the foster father "accidentally" walked in on me during my shower. And decided to stand around for another 15 seconds saying "that's not an accident he typically makes" while I was desperately trying to cover myself instead of, you know, immediately leaving. Other things - the family was deeply religious in a mega-church, everyone-hugging-for-a-bit-too-long kind of way that I was not. The children I roomed with had some strong emotional and social problems, while I had emerged from my ordeal fairly unscathed. Their biological son kept on hitting on me, but at least he, unlike his creepy father, was only a year older than me.
Decided I'd had enough. I was 16, I was a pretty self-sufficient teenager by that point, so I might as well hoof it. After about a week in that foster home, I skipped school for a day, something I'd never done, and began to prepare myself for my journey. I was a typical teenage girl in one way - one of my stops before running away was the mall. I wanted new shoes if I was going to be heading across the country in them.
That was when the miracle happened. My high school guidance counselor was at the mall for a quick errand, and she saw me. She recognized me as a student who shouldn't be at the mall during a school day, but she had no idea what had been going on with foster care. The system was so backed up it actually hadn't informed my school yet, and I certainly wasn't broadcasting my personal information. So she started out yelling at me for truancy, but once I explained to her how desperate I was, how I was about to run away just to escape this situation, everything changed.
She immediately became a foster parent just to take me in. Her husband, trusting soul that he was, went right along with the plan and opened up their home to me without even meeting me. It took about four days for everything to process, but then I finally got to make the move from the sketchy house to hers. Both of my counselor's children had already moved away to college, so I simply took over one of their bedrooms. It suddenly felt like I had been transplanted to a perfect sitcom family or something - a quiet, beautiful home, one that didn't have bloodstains on the carpet and holes broken in the drywall, one with a kind and supportive parental unit. I mean, don't get me wrong - life was still chaotic. I had a long journey ahead of me that included testifying against my parents and being estranged from family for longer than I would have liked. But I didn't need to run away, I didn't need to fight to survive, and that's all because of her.
The system pretty much forgot about me then. I was supposed to have monthly visits with a case worker and my guardian ad litem. But they were overworked, and I was one of the good cases. I had court-mandated therapy, but otherwise, I was a pretty well-behaved, high-achieving student. My foster mother was a trusted member of the school community. I guess they had to cut corners somewhere, and that was me. The visits got shorter and less frequent. And it worked out fine in my situation because I truly was in a good place, but what if I wouldn't have been?
Shit got long; might as well cut things off here, I guess!