Not as Empty As a Foster Kid
By Vonia Martin
Please excuse me while I attempt to walk a mile in a foster child’s shoes. I know I keep bringing up the subject but I just can’t get over how horrible things can be for these children. It’s not just that they have no family, they have no hope. What is a life without, literally every thing? Do any of us really know what that means? Imagine what your life would be like with no family, no home, no where to turn, no one on your side? Where is the hope in that? These are just some of the larger then life things you're missing but what about the countless little things that make up a human being? It's these nameless traits, gestures, expressions, mannerisms, old wives tales, empathies, nurturing, ways we take on for ourselves we get from our families without a word being spoken. How we carry ourselves and present ourselves to the world, confidence, self preservation, and so much more that there isn't even words for because we just do it, following our parent's lead. Without a father you have little hope of learning about respect; self and for others. A girl without self respect is an easy target for many to take advantage of, sexually. So there you have it just a small portion of what life is like for one of the disposable people. As a society we love disposable things, we purposely make single use stuff our land fills are full of them. Our tolerance for these things should not exist nor should it tolerate throwing children into a system that doesn't foster shit, let alone children.
When you are a foster child everything reminds you that you are less then a person. All the shows on TV tell you family is everything, there for you have nothing. Who gives us value? Who sticks up for you no matter what? Who stops the predators from taking advantage? Without family you are no one and everyone treats you like you are a piece of shit, that some won’t even acknowledge you as a human being. Others resent you for being alive, to them you are a waste of flesh that doesn't deserve anything but the scraps society so generously throws at you. Then beat the day lights out of you if you don’t act like the monster they perceive you to be. If it weren’t for the fact that I am cute and men want to stick their penises in me I wouldn’t be alive. If it weren’t for egomaniacs that think they are doing me a favor by using me for sex and degradation, I might have some self respect. Survival can make you compromise a lot. As most survivors will question the trade off. Is surviving the most important thing? What about self respect? What about being true to yourself? It goes out the window when you are faced with not just death but the torture that occurs prior to death. These kids don't even have the ability to get a drivers license, who is going to teach them to drive? Who's going to insure them? Why not get a bus pass? With what money? A lot of these kids run away before they are 18 knowing their time is up it is their only way to claim some control over their own lives. Especially the boys because they have to register with selective service, it's the law. In a foster boys mind at 18 he will be braking the law not being able to register without an address to register with. So they hit the streets avoiding any contact with the law. These kids usually have no ID again no address and probably no birth certificate or social security card.
Things are changing, slowly, for these people but the best way we can serve them is to keep children with their families. The last thing we should be doing is creating more of the same. The whole family should be put in foster care that way everyone can learn what a functioning family looks and acts like. The foster family should mirror the troubled one in every way except behavior. The Moms should be in a room together with their daughters and the same for the men and their sons. No one should be alone with anyone member of either family, 3 or more should be the rule, for everyones safety. We have TV shows about the miracle nanny what about the miracle foster family? Talk about reality try a foster kid’s reality? Liability is a bitch when no one is liable. All I know is we need to try different things for different families. First we need to listen to everyone in the family, individually and collectively before coming up with a game plan to treat the family as a whole, no one should be separated. When we take a kid away from their family that child thinks they are to blame, it is their fault their family is being put through hell. It doesn't matter how many beatings they have endured because those are their fault too so we only amplify these feelings and add a few worse ones by ripping them from all they have ever known. Rarely, do these kids get treated any better in foster care. I am probably preaching to the choir so out of touch am I with the times. As long as something is being done to get these numbers lowered especially the teen pregnancy and suicide rate.
The suicide rate among the police, foster kids(CES), veterans, and Native Americans. is staggering, most don't make it to their 21st birthday. Not of the 400,000 but of the 40,000-50,000 that age out of the system or run away before they do. These people are at higher risk for human traffickers, perverts, murder, suicide, pedaphiles(I thinks that's how to spell that) and false confessions. Not to mention at higher risk to leave behind more foster kids when they disappear or die. Sex becomes a way of life for these people because what else do they have? Nothing. So it's at least a means to an end or the end to the mean. There is no end to the mean, mean seems to live forever inside the heart of its victims.
These people are pre trained and conditioned to take the blame for shit they didn’t do! Our prisons are full of them! Where else are you going to go? You have no home or family, you live on the streets.
There is nothing humane about foster care or the way society treats these kids. Some are very troubled but who wouldn't be? I don't mean to blame foster families, they may not have the means to care for them after 18 but who will? Our prisons and mental institutions? If a kid aging out of the system has no car, phone, ID, skills, home, or family what are they suppose to do? No one will hire you, even if you could get around to find a job, not without a social security number and an ID or address or phone. All they can do is go stand in line at the work force places, if there is one close by. Really that's all these kids can do is fill the jobs our illegal immigrants use to do. At least it's something.
I watch a lot of crime shows on TV and every single one of them uses foster kids as there suspect pool first. Why? Because they get the most confessions from this group of people. My problem is that I don't believe they all did it, I believe they falsely confess. These kids have been taking the blame for everything since they were abandoned by their families. Foster parents usually have their own kids and it's so much easier for them to set up the foster kid to take the blame and their parents are eager to believe it too. No matter how much the foster kid denies it, no matter what the proof is that clears them they will be blamed. Eventually you give up trying, you just admit to things you didn't do, it's easier that way. After foster care they find themselves on the street, homeless, until they get picked up by the police. All of a sudden they have a roof over their head and three meals a day, not bad in the eyes of a foster child. Who cares that their confessions leave criminals on the street, not them, not after the interrogation they went through. In the kids eyes it's what society deserves for abandoning them completely on their eighteenth birthday and then use them to get a false confession.
Most of these kids have been used for whatever purpose, mostly sex, to the point even they believe that's all they are good for. A lot of them are so desperate for love they don't even know what is happening to them is wrong. Foster children have a warped sense of what is appropriate because what is done to them isn't. If a foster child has enough nerve or sense of right and wrong to question what is being done to them they are made to regret that.
There are 400,000 + children entering the foster care system each and every year and this number hasn't changed much over the years. Why? My theory is that foster children have children and some where along the way the parents get killed or kill themselves. They had no family and now their kids have no family so into the system they go. Not the entire 400,000 will age out, most will go back to their families only a fraction say 40,000 to 50,000 won't find a forever home and of them most will run away before 18. Foster children are easily tortured by the foster families real children, kids can be very cruel. If given an opportunity they can convince the foster kid that at 18 they will have to leave. As soon as the state cuts off the money they will no longer be welcome. Foster kids lose their voice a few years into the nightmare that has become their life besides no one listens. It's the lack of an audience to hear their cries that at first hurts the most so you get louder it's then you realize they can hear you just fine they are choosing not to listen. So you stop trying to be heard, you learn to suck it up, store all the pain some where deep inside yourself so not even you knows where it is. Until you do. Even if they don't, keeping it all on the surface only enrages the people around you. They think; how dare you? The nerve some of these kids have! They really think they should be treated the same as everyone else! Don't they know their family has abandoned them? That because of my kindness and generosity they have a place to sleep. Sure it maybe in a kennel with the family dog but what do they expect? To sleep with my children? Oh hell no they aren't really people anyway, their family had a reason for tossing them aside. You keep telling yourself that. You have to sleep with one eye opened or risk the unthinkable being done to you in your sleep. So you see sleeping in a kennel with the family dog isn't so bad.
My idea was that I could handle the abuse way more then I could tolerate watching someone else get molested, raped, or worse. I was always sticking up for the under dog I just never realized I was the under dog. Being a foster kid didn't stop me from pointing out any and all injustices I endured. I also questioned authority at every turn, daring them to do what they say when I knew all the while they were lying. People like to blow smoke up your ass when they have no one to answer to. It must be human nature to raise yourself up by putting some one less fortunate down. There isn't anyone lower than a foster kid. They also find it really easy to to take what ever they want from you since they don't have to answer to anyone. For example; the fifth foster home I was in was a Polish family with 3 daughters of their own the youngest was 14 when I went to live with them. I was 10 years old. With all their daughters going to the same high school so the whole family befriended a Japanese foreign exchange student, I can't remember his name. When his mother came to visit him she wanted to meet the whole family, me included. Come to find out she was quite wealthy and as a sign of her appreciation she bought every one a ring with their birth stone, me included! For the first time in my life someone thought of me as an equal, as deserving, as appreciated, as good as any human being. There were no words to explain how amazing that made me feel. Then she handed me this little pink satin pouch and inside was a ruby ring. It was small compared to everyone else but I knew size didn't matter, my birthstone was ruby a precious stone. None of theirs were a precious stone so my small ruby surrounded by gold was worth more then their big gaudy rings. As soon as I took it off to play with play dough, one of my foster sisters was right there and told on me so the mom took my ring and put it on her pinkie! She wore it there from that time on, torturing me all the while. When I left she kept my ring and probably still has it.
Nothing is really yours when you are a foster child, not even your own ideas.
The last place I was in was in Phoenix was a shelter and as soon as my adopted mother disowned me all the girls came qand beat me up and stole my clothes, shoes, and jewelry. For the rest of the time I was there I had to watch other girls wearing my stuff. They weren't made to give them back because who would? It wasn't the first time every thing I had has come up missing only to reappear on someone else. Luckily, the system moves you ever six months or so when you're in the system.
You are never treated the same by anyone. Its’s crazy but its like society has a subconscious and its constantly telling you you are not good enough, no one wants you, no one values you, so why don’t you just die? What do you have to offer society? A burden, a future criminal? Even if you have talent in any of the sciences or arts, no one will ever know it, not even you. Some people believe that these things, we like intelligence, for example will some how win the day. I beg to differ, environment, habit, DNA, survival, practice, peer pressure all play apart in shaping a foster kid’s life. Only if the rest of the word wants to hear your message and from you.
When you come from no where with nothing you are a no good a criminal. You cannot and should not be trusted! Exactly what it is anyone thinks we are going to do I do not know because we are the first ones everyone turns to to blame. No one listens to us when we tell the truth no matter how hard we try, we are liars. So no one tells us the truth and they do not even care if we know it because we do.
We come in I all shapes, sizes, colors, and beliefs just like everyone else. There is no disquishing feature to separate us from the rest yet we are. We are isolated, if we survive the system, by those who say they are “helping” us.
When in fact they are just helping themselves to whatever they can get from us. Why not, we do not need anything nor want for anything so take it all. People that have survived the system, wether they aged out or ran away, have a unique perspective on things. We see things that most people cannot but when we share this knowledge it is almost always taken from us. Some of it I can understand, especially if it is to help others, but some of it is to make a profit and I have a problem with that. Foster kids do not want to have to ask for everything, they would rather earn it like everyone else. However, when you suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, personality defects, and many other disorders it is really hard to hold down a job. Then there is the housing problem, without an address you cannot even accept benefits if you qualify to receive them. Most foster kids do not want any help from the state or government because they make you feel like less then a person. They seem to recent you for needing help even though that is what they are there for. It is very confusing and in the end you cannot trust them anyway, they too seem to want you to kill yourself rather then be the burden you are. No one wants to be a burden so we avoid the system and any help they may offer.
I wish I had all the answers because things are not improving for the young adults aging out. They still have no one. How can I make a difference to these people? I’m in no better shape then they are, except I have a job and a place to live. I just wish my “boyfriend” would let me have a few foster kids but he won’t. He won’t let me do anything worth while, telling me that I cannot make a difference. I think he is afraid that I might make a difference before he is able to take the credit, like he does with everything else I think of. It is so frustrating. I cannot even have a conversation with him for fear I will let something slip. I mean who has to constantly watch what they say because their “boyfriend” will steal it from you and make it his own? I do that’s who! It sucks because I trusted him because he was a teacher. I foolishly thought that when I told him one of my ideas that he was giving me credit for them at his school but he wasn’t. He took my ideas and past them off as his own and my words too. I cannot believe what a liar he is! When I finally realized what he was doing he retired from teaching. He doesn’t even bother denying what he has done, no, he just tells me that it does not matter since he is not making a bunch of money with them. What a jerk! I thought teachers were some of the few people foster kids could trust but I was way wrong, they take from us like everyone else. Of course no one will believe me because they do not want to. Most likely, everyone has a part in what happens to foster kids, directly or indirectly and none of it is good or for the kid.
Society is very skilled at getting us to kill ourselves because no one makes it alone in this world and everyone will make sure you do not. More then that they will try to see you kill yourself rather then let you become a burden. It would be really helpful if those of you with family could just for a minute imagine what your life would look like without anyone. What if instead of living with your mom and dad you were given up to the state to raise? What if this happened when you were old enough to know what was happening? How would you feel being made to live with strangers? What if after a few foster homes they decide to take all you have left of your family and remove you brother who you do not see again for 8 years? How would you react when finally being adopted after 6 more years of foster care only to be disowned after only 2 years of being adopted? Do you have any idea what you would do with no one in your corner? These are a few things you would have to think about and survive if you had no one. Try to imagine how exhausting it is to not have anyone, to always be on guard watching your front and back all the time.
