Surviving The Foster System

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Sometimes I forget I was in foster care.

Which feels like a weird thing to say, because that is not exactly a tiny little footnote in someone’s life. It’s not like forgetting an old haircut or a phase where you thought low-rise jeans were a good idea. It was years of my life. Important years too. The messy, teenage, becoming-a-person years where you’re supposed to be figuring yourself out while still having some kind of safe place to fall apart.

And yet, now that I’m in my 30s, there are days where it feels like that whole part of my life belongs to someone else.

Not because it didn’t matter.

Not because it didn’t leave marks.

I think maybe because I survived it in a way my brain doesn’t always know what to do with.

I feel lucky, which is a complicated thing to say when you’re talking about the foster system.

Lucky is not the word people usually reach for there. But I do feel like one of the rare ones who made it out the other end without completely falling apart.

Unscathed? Maybe not.

I’m sure there are scars I don’t always notice because I’ve been carrying them for so long. I’m sure there is trauma tucked into the corners of my personality, showing up in weird little ways I don’t even clock until later. I’m sure there are things I normalized back then because what else was I supposed to do? Sit down with a clipboard and start diagnosing the emotional damage in real time?

I was a teenager.

I was just trying to get through it.

From around 13 to 20ish, because for some reason I remember staying in the system longer than I probably should have, I was pushed through so many homes in my hometown. It was a smaller city than the one I live in now, but I swear I went through at least 90% of the homes there. Maybe five to seven placements in that stretch, not counting the little detour to the city I live in now when my mother decided she was suddenly fit enough to raise a child.

(Despite not having custody of literally any of her other children. Make it make sense.)

Which, looking back, is insane.

Like ma’am, the track record was not exactly sparkling.

That lasted about six months before everything fell apart again and I started getting cycled through the foster system in that city too.

Different houses. Different rules. Different adults. Different beds. Different expectations. Different versions of “home” that never really felt like home.

I spent my Sweet 16 moving into a new foster home.

Not at a party. Not surrounded by friends. Not doing some big teenage movie version of turning sixteen where everything is balloons and photos and people making you feel special for a day.

I remember there being a drugstore cake and a card. And I want to be clear, because this is the part that always feels complicated to say: I do appreciate the effort. I’m not ungrateful for what they did for me. Someone did try. Someone remembered enough to get something, and that matters.

But it still wasn’t what I imagined for my sixteenth birthday.

And you don’t get that one back.

You only get one Sweet 16. One version of that weird little milestone people make such a big deal out of. And mine was spent moving my things into another house that wasn’t really mine, trying to adjust to another place, another set of rules, another version of “this is where you live now.” (Spoiler Alert: I ran away the next day)

That’s the part I think people don’t always understand. A placement is not automatically a home. A roof is not automatically safety. A room is not automatically belonging.

Sometimes it’s just a place your stuff ends up for a while.

I don’t want to pretend I was some perfect little angel through all of it either. I wasn’t. I was angry. I was mouthy. I was probably impossible sometimes. There was one group home where I remember being grounded about 90% of the time. Mostly by my own doing, sure, but also, what exactly did anyone expect from a teenager being bounced around like paperwork with a pulse?

That doesn’t mean every bad thing was someone else’s fault.

It just means context matters.

I was a kid who had already learned that adults were temporary. Rules were temporary. Houses were temporary. People could say one thing and do another. People could promise something and still disappear. You could get used to a place, start to breathe a little easier, and then one day you’d be packing your things again.

After a while, you stop unpacking all the way.

Maybe not literally. Maybe your clothes still go in drawers and your toothbrush still goes beside the sink. But some part of you stays packed. Some part of you learns not to get too comfortable. Not to attach too hard. Not to believe too much in the idea that this one might finally be different.

And for the longest time, I would have told you none of those homes ever felt like home.

But as I’m writing this, I realize that’s not completely true.

There was one.

I had almost forgotten about it until now, which feels strange. Maybe because remembering the good parts hurts in a different way than remembering the bad ones.

It was on an acreage. There were three other girls there, and I remember getting along really well with at least two of them. Honestly, all of us generally got along. There were dogs. There was space. Real space. The kind you can run around in. The kind that makes a kid feel like their body has somewhere to put all the noise.

And I remember feeling wanted there.

Not tolerated.

Not managed.

Wanted.

That is such a small word for such a huge feeling.

I don’t remember every detail. I don’t remember the exact timeline perfectly. But I remember the feeling. I remember that, for once, it didn’t feel like I was just passing through someone else’s life. It felt like I had a spot there.

And then I was pulled out after maybe seven months.

I don’t remember all the reasons. Maybe there were reasons that made sense to adults on paper. Foster care is full of paper reasons. Reports. Decisions. Moves. Plans. Case notes. Things that probably look clean in a file but feel completely different when you’re the kid being moved.

All I know is that the one place I remember feeling wanted did not last.

And maybe that’s part of why I forgot about it for so long.

Because sometimes the good memory is the one with teeth.

Still, somehow, I made it out.

I don’t know how to say that without sounding dramatic, but I mean it. I made it out. I got through the homes, the group homes, the instability, the weird in-between years where I was technically growing up but mostly just surviving whatever version of life I had landed in.

And I know not everyone does.

That’s the part that sits heavy with me. Because the foster system does not exactly hand you a soft landing. A lot of kids age out or get pushed out or stumble out with nothing but survival instincts and a garbage bag full of belongings. A lot of kids end up in addiction, in dangerous relationships, in cycles they were never properly given the tools to escape.

And I don’t say that with judgment.

God, no.

I say that with grief.

Because I understand how easily it could have gone differently. I understand how thin the line can be between “I made it” and “I couldn’t.” I understand that sometimes people don’t fall apart because they want to. Sometimes they fall apart because there was never a safe place to put the pain.

For me, somehow, it didn’t become drugs or alcohol.

It became anime.

Which sounds funny until you really think about it.

For me, somehow, it didn’t become drugs or alcohol.

It became anime and writing.

Anime was the escape, but writing was where I put myself when I didn’t know where else to go. I wrote so much fanfiction back then. So much. I was writing myself into every anime, every story, every fictional world I could get my hands on.

And maybe that sounds funny from the outside, but looking back, it makes perfect sense.

Real life didn’t give me a lot of control. I didn’t get to choose where I lived. I didn’t get to choose when I moved. I didn’t get to choose which adults were in charge, what rules I had to follow, or how long I got to stay somewhere before everything changed again.

But in a story? I could choose.

I could give myself powers. I could give myself friends. I could give myself a love interest, a tragic backstory, a found family, a bedroom that stayed mine, people who noticed when I was gone, people who came looking. I could write myself into a world where I mattered enough to be part of the plot.

And that? That was everything.

Anime gave me somewhere to disappear to, and writing gave me a way to exist there. It let me take all the loneliness and instability and turn it into something else. Not something fixed, exactly. But something with shape. Something I could control. Something that belonged to me.

I don’t think people always understand how important that kind of escape can be when you’re young and everything around you feels temporary.

Sometimes the thing that saves you is not one big dramatic rescue.

Sometimes it’s a show.

A character.

A notebook.

A fanfiction you wrote at 2am because your real life felt too small, too unstable, too lonely, and you needed somewhere else to go.

And maybe that’s why stories matter so much to me now.

Maybe that’s why fictional places feel so real in my head. Maybe that’s why I can get attached to characters like they’re people I know. Maybe that’s why writing has never felt like just a hobby. It has always been a way out. A way through. A way to take things I didn’t know how to survive and turn them into something with shape.

I don’t think I came out of foster care untouched.

I think I came out functional.

There’s a difference.

I came out with a sense of humor sharp enough to cut through discomfort. I came out independent, sometimes to my own detriment. I came out with a complicated relationship to family and home and belonging. I came out with the ability to detach when things feel unsafe, because once upon a time, that was not a personality flaw. It was protection.

But I also came out alive.

I came out still able to love things.

Still able to be soft in places.

Still able to build a life that does not look like where I came from.

And maybe that is the part I feel lucky for.

Not because the system was good to me. Not because everything worked out the way it should have. Not because I got some perfect happy ending wrapped in a bow.

I feel lucky because I am here.

Because I can look back at that teenager and know she deserved better, while also being grateful she found ways to survive with what she had. Because I can remember the homes that didn’t feel like home, and the one that almost did. Because I can admit that it hurt without letting it be the only thing I am.

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I survived the foster system.

Not perfectly.

Not without scars.

But I survived it.

And some days, that still feels like something worth saying out loud.

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Sometimes survival doesn’t look loud. Sometimes it looks like making it to your 30s and realizing the life that almost broke you didn’t get the final word.

Talk soon, Kass ☕🌿