A personal reflection on surviving the foster care system, moving through homes that never felt like home, spending my Sweet 16 in a new placement, and how anime and writing fanfiction gave me somewhere safe to exist when real life wouldn’t stay still.

I keep asking myself who I’d be without the trauma. Without the loss, the foster homes, the abandonment, the versions of me that had to survive too early. This isn’t a polished answer. It’s me sitting with the question and not looking away.