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And then and then and then and then. I’ve been in too many stretches of situations like that to count.
We got taken away right before my 14th birthday and sent to live with an aunt, who was basically a higher functioning version of my mom. We’d get into and she’d inevitably kick me out. Then she’d call the cops and report me as a runaway. After a few months I had no friends left to let me crash because my aunt would send cops to their house to get me. Most of our conflict centered on her going to work, heading to the bar, and not getting home until midnight, damn near every night…. Leaving me to feed bath, and put to bed my five siblings…. And get the two school age kids up and ready in the mornings before I left for school. You know, the sort of lack of actual parenting that , in part, lead to us getting removed to begin with.
A year prior to this I had a fight and got hit in the eye with a full can of soda, and my left eye can’t move upward to this day. My aunt took me to get looked at and the doctor said that the bone cracked and the muscle of my eye got trapped in the bone, and that I’d need surgery to fix it. My aunt said that since I wanted to be a hoodlum gangbanger and fight (entirely untrue, but the story behind that fight is immaterial here) that I needed to find my own way too and from surgery.
We lived in Yucca Valley and the doctor we were referred to was in San Bernardino. So, you know, I’m 14 and told to go handle this surgery on my own. My social worker was “working on it” but nothing materialized. I also had to go to summer school. My aunt dropped me off in the morning but said I had to find a ride back. Well.. the school, La Contenta Middle school in Yucca Valley, was in the middle of the fucking desert. It wasn’t like I’d have to walk through city blocks or some shit. The first mile or so of that shit was straight desert highway… in the middle of fucking summer. Shit was anything but fun but whatever.
So my aunt was talking about taking me to “visit” my great-grandmother to help her do some work on her house. I caught wind that she planned to leave me there.
My uncle’s ex-wife lived at the bottom of the grade, this long ass hill in Morongo you have to take to get to yucca. Her daughter, Sherry, was at the house and saw what was going down and told me I could come to their house if things boiled over that night. So when my aunt was ready to leave I bailed. She was driving one of my cousins out there with me so had to take him anyways, but told my older cousin not to let me in that night. SO I was locked out for the night. I called Sherry and she backed out on me. She said she didn’t expect my aunt to actually lock me out, but that I could come the next day to figure out my next move. So I slept on the porch at my aunts I walked from the middle of Yucca like 3/5’s of the way down the grade to Sherry’s mom’s house in the middle of summer. I get there and my fucking cousins show up a few hours after I get there to pick me up, on some “you don’t talk about what goes on in our house” shit.
They dropped me off at my aunts friend’s house, who took me in, and that was cool, but my aunt still found ways to fuck with me. She got a few hundred dollars in 900 number bills and blamed me. Fun fact? Her son was home for a week during that month. He even said it was him but NOPE. She blamed me and kept my clothing allotment from the state.
Anyhow her friend had a roommate had friends in the same town I was from and I rolled out with him for a weekend to visit my people. He left earlier than we agreed on so when I got to the meeting spot he was already back home. Again, my aunt heard and reported me as a runaway. So my social worker said I had a warrant for my arrest….actually, looking back I doubt that, but that was her standard threat when I was awol, which would turn out to be often.
So I turn myself and she puts me in a home in Moreno Valley. I’m there for a few weeks before she moves me to another home, because the first was simply an interim home until a more permanent placement opened up. Of course, nobody told me that going in. So I get to the new home and get into a scrap with two eses and their boys the second my worker left. So I went awol, this time for real.
I get the same warrant threat from my worker and turned myself in, and told her why I left. So where does she take me? The same fucking place and yeah, that went as well as the first. I stuck it out for a few weeks but that shit wasn’t good. It was the most stereotypical foster home there was. We had a big bag of off brand cheerios, frozen hamburger patties, some off brand ass ramen (yeah, that shit exists lol) and that was IT while this lady cooked up meals for her fam and took their food to the back. Between that and the tiny, loudmouth eses with their big homies always a step away, the shitty food, zero supervision and another long ass walk to and from school (though at least this was a suburban setting), what was the point of staying? So I went awol again.
Keep in mind, ALL of this happened between April 5th and October and I’m leaving out a lot of details. I had just turned 14.
Nothing but L’s and life whooping my ass bruh. My aunt eventually took all my siblings to my great-grandmother’s for a “weekend” and never fucking returned. Like, everything I mentioned in here had incredibly long-lasting ramifications. One domino hit the other and on and on it went.
Things just get real sometimes. “it is what it is” is cliché to the point of parody but damn if it’s not the perfectly concise and succinct explanation for those sorts of circumstances.
Life is giving you that work right now, but you’ll be alright. As the saying goes, when it rains, it poors. Find a way to shelter yourself from that shit. I’m glad you shared because that’s part of it.
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