Dream (part 1)

I said, I told the older boy that I was pregnant with him so He would think it was his son because he didn't know what to do, but he knew that if I told him that he would come up with something and he did it, he got angry like he knew he would. and, um, he had two of his children. my friends held my arms while he beat me until I started bleeding and you know, they beat the baby out of me and uh, yeah, so I didn't have my father's child, that was the only way I could solve that problem because who?

Am I going to say what am I going to say? Didn't I try? telling my mom when I was there I called her and didn't say anything specific I just said mom dad is being very mean like can we please come home and she said no it's a court order you have to stay there down and uh I was like well what are you doing? You're 10 years old like my dad's trailer is in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. I don't know what I'm supposed to do and then when he comes back I still don't know.

I know what I'm supposed to do now that I'm back in Michigan and thank God I lost that baby, so my life probably would have been even worse, but um uh, one of my sisters, my older sister had a boyfriend and his um, his cousin. uh, he ended up sexually assaulting me right after that, uh, that was so I'm still 10 at this point and um, and I was really messed up like hickeys, bruises like I was strangled for the whole nine yards and uh, then school started. Hooray, I'm leaving. I'm in sixth grade now and this is what my life has been like and you want me to sit here in this class with these kids and act like I care about what everyone is talking about when I really don't.

I just want to die like this. everything I want to do I don't really care about anything else and um and I too I don't know if you remember I said um like my schoolwork was never far behind, I was always the best in my class, so sixth grade was starting And I think that I don't want to go to sixth grade. Honestly, I don't like that there is nothing to do there. I'll just sit there and do whatever. I'll get bored. I already knew all this stuff and so I didn't want to go to school and then Truman's officer started picking me up to go to school and uh, but they wouldn't let me go to any classes because they said I was a danger. to the other kids I was a danger to the other students because I had built up this reputation where I would just be angry and lash out and then they would put me in this conference room right next to the main office and I would just spend the day there, no They didn't give me any school work or anything, the real officer picked me up, I guess they just made sure I was in the school building, that meant I wasn't going to be absent and I ended up starting a fire. that room because I guess I was bored I wanted to get out of there like I didn't want to be there anymore so uh oh and they kept the door locked and this guy who was also a problem child was working in the office as an office assistant I think that just so they could keep an eye on him, he ended up opening the door and letting me out and you know there was a fire and I left, ran home and it was a long walk and, well, the truth.

The officer didn't come to pick me up after that, I guess we'll just drop her off at home, so after about a month, we're in early October of what should have been my sixth grade year. a letter in the mail we got a court date so my mom and I go to court and um I'm 10 right now and I don't know why the judge asked me but he asked me he said you? I want to go home or you want to go to foster care and I say I want to go to foster care because it's not working here, I need to change the scene in a big way and it probably will.

It sounds better and like they took me away because they said not because of what I had done at school but because of neglect, they said my mother was neglecting me because she just wasn't home, you know, she wasn't around to make sure I went to school. school. or whatever, she wasn't around at all, but definitely yeah, she wasn't there, she was going through her own thing and I didn't understand it until I was a lot older at the time, my mom wasn't there and everyone around me. I thought I was the coolest kid because you know I had all this money, I could do whatever I wanted and there was no one to say anything so everyone was saying your mom is so cool and I was looking at all their moms telling them it was time to you walk into the house and you know or you tell them that they can't go out with me like no one wants their kids around me but I wanted a mom that would say it's time to come in the house or you can do this or you can't do that , but my mom never did any of that.

I was always allowed to do whatever I wanted and it was with a lot of problems because who is going to leave, you know, life decisions in the hands of a child, so when the judge asked me that, I thought: I don't know if my answer had some bearing on what he decided but he decided right then and there that you're going to go to foster care and that's what happened so suddenly Suddenly I'm taken to my first foster home and my new caseworker He goes to my house to get me this one, one of those single-load washing machines like a laundry basket, yes, a single-load laundry basket that he put some of my clothes in.

Now I am in my new foster home. This is my new life and I have a basket of clothes with me. This is what I have now and I was really in the depression I was going through at the time. Was 10. It was very annoying and I was angry, I was so angry and I started going to school in my new city, my new foster home and they ended up putting me in seventh grade, which made me and my new school happy. director I had, called me into her office and looked at all my records and she said, "you're very smart" and she said and I told her what happened.

I thought I stopped going to school because I didn't want to. go to sixth grade and she said, well, what do you want to do? and I told her: I want to go to high school and she asked me: what if tomorrow when you come to school, you will be in seventh grade and I was like why do I want to go to high school and she said you are enough smart but your maturity level is not there and I kept quiet because I knew that even when I was so old I knew I was screwing up, I knew it.

I knew I couldn't have anything good because it would just ruin it, so I was happy. I was in seventh grade now, but now I'm in foster care. I don't have a family, but that's nothing new because I didn't have one. Any family before and people have this notion about foster care that when a child is sent to foster care, now they are taken care of like we can forget about them, but that's not what happened to me, it wasn't a solution if My own father had not already traumatized me and everything I had gone through as foster care would have traumatized me greatly.

I felt like it had been imposed on me as a kind of punishment. Everything felt like a punishment. I was on probation while I was in foster care for studying that fire at school and every time I violated my probation I had to be locked up and there were terms like I had to take my medication or they were going to lock me up. up, they can't kick me out of school or they're going to lock me up, so I used that um to move house when something was going wrong in one of my foster homes when, you know, maybe my foster dad was too a bit.

Handy or something like that or my adoptive mother was um I would get in trouble. I would go to school and hit someone just so I could get suspended because that would break my um my probation, which meant I would have to go to court. and they would have to lock me up every time I messed up my parole they automatically locked me up for three months so I knew after I locked myself up I could go to a new home so that's what I would do when no one would listen to me about needing to move , sometimes I would tell my social workers that you know I need to get out of here and they wouldn't listen to me, so I would go to school and act crazy and now they lock me up and when I got locked up, I would act even crazier as soon as they locked me up , the day I went in there, I would pick who I knew, I don't know, you know, maybe someone who I might think might intimidate me and I would pick that person up and I would beat him up and it wasn't just about hitting someone, it's What my father taught me, he didn't show any remorse, he wasn't afraid to hurt you, so that made me a different type of fighter when I would fight because I wasn't afraid to hurt anyone.

I'm not afraid to attack your neck, your eyes, your head and I realized right away when other kids thought they would be afraid to hurt someone and so I would. that I would go after someone and they would immediately put me in solitary confinement for ten days and then when you come out of isolation you know they won't let you interact with the general population right away, like if you eat with them you have to eat with your back to them like They were facing the table, with your back to them, you put your tray, you know, here and you sit there and you're just not separated, you're still not welcome, but when they let me out of isolation, I usually jumped on someone else. for the first hour and I beat him too and then they put me back in isolation for another 10 days and then when they let me out of everything.

That would be fine, just give me a book that I'll read, you know, I love The Count of Monte Cristo, you guys have a copy of that because I always had to establish the fact at the beginning that I wanted people to think I was crazy as a Don. not with me I'm crazy I wasn't I wasn't crazy at all but I used it I guess to protect myself my mother I discovered this recently she did the same with my father she acted crazy with the purpose of making him stop hurting her if she knew he he was going to hurt him, you know, do something to him, maybe he would escape, he once burned his arm with an iron.

I remember one time when she was four or five years old. and she came out of the bedroom and her arm was bloody and dripping and she had jeans wrapped around it and my dad said, "Come see what your mother did, she looked at what she did, so she came into the kitchen dripping blood and I." I went in and looked at her and she was dripping blood and I said my dad was yelling at me to look at her and I asked my mom about it recently and she told me no she wasn't trying to do it. commit suicide, it was that she was trying to protect herself from my father because when she started acting crazy and got hurt, my father would leave her alone, she would feel bad and she wouldn't have to go through whatever. he had planned for her and uh so that was her defense and she became my defense when I was in foster care and when they locked me up I mean I was never crazy I just had to act crazy to protect myself and it worked but Also when that's how you act all the time the type of energy you put out is what you're going to get back some people you know start treating me like I'm crazy and like I'm just unattainable No adult in my life was going to be able to communicate with me , so I kept getting thrown into worse and worse homes.

You know, he had a file that thick. Whichever foster parent took me had to read it first before they decided to take me. I entered and he didn't come with more money, so it wasn't the nicest houses that took me in, it was the worst ones that took me in and the ones that wanted the money when I entered a foster home, not my sisters. Wow, it was just me, they stayed home with my mom, but a couple of years after I came in, my sisters were older at the time they came in, they were 16 and 17 years old.

And my older sister married her boyfriend right away. so she wouldn't have to be in foster care and my middle sister was adopted by a nice white family, you know, put braces on her teeth took her shopping at the mall loved her and hugged her graduated from high school University of Michigan here in Ann Arbor, so, she, uh, turned out okay, but I guess because she was okay, girl, I mean, she was, no, she didn't act crazy, but I ended up slipping, I guess, out of the system because she had to do it. act crazy to get over it