When I was 2 years old I was put into foster care with my two older sisters.
I can hardly remember it because I was so young but for some reason this one memory sticks with me still.
we were taken away from our mother and father without much of an explanation
And for a while neither me nor my two sisters understood what was going on, but now I do.
My father was a drug addict on and off for years even before they had us. My mother was reliant on him, and she chased after him constantly. Loving him unconditionally, recklessly.
One day something happened though, my father was out doing drugs high off his mind and my mother left us alone in the apartment chasing after him as usual, trying to get him to quit his habit. She wasn't gone very long so she thought nothing of it. But she left us home alone. A 2 year old, a 3 year old and a 7 year old to fend for themselves.
People knew my father, knew his habits, knew his reputation. So when our apartment got broken into and trashed in search of drug possession I guess our parents should of saw it coming someday but I guess they never imagined it would.
Did they find drugs? yes, of course because why would he bother to hide drugs in his own apartment when he could care less about getting caught. but they also found kids unattended with drugs in the place. So it was deemed child neglect, rightfully so.
My father was locked away for the drugs and us kids, all 3 of us were taken away from our mother. And put into foster care temporarily.
Sometimes I'll still have dreams about it.
The foster care family we ended up with were definitely not nice caring people. Although I was young I vividly remember this, my oldest sister was refusing something and was visibly upset and next thing I knew someone was grabbing her hair and pulling it and dragging her around.
For some reason I was sitting on a chair in a dark room alone I had no clue where my other sister was but I remember crying after witnessing my sister getting abused and whoever was doing it closed the door so they wouldn't have to hear me cry.
I fell off my chair trying to run to the door and just sat where I fell crying more, Feeling so small, vulnerable and helpless.
This memory still haunts me, knowing that this is how I'll forever remember being 2 years is very saddening.
What makes me angry thinking about it is that they tried to even pretend they were treating us perfectly, buying us all cute girly dresses and even taking us to see Santa at a Macy's I still have the photo that was taken and even then I could tell we weren't happy.
I'll never know the rest of the missing puzzle pieces of this memory. And I'll never truly know how badly or how much this all affected my older sisters because til this day they won't talk about it. But I think my oldest sister got the worse of it, in fact I have this awful feeling somethings worse then what witnessed happened, but there's no way she'll ever tell And I don't blame her. I just hope she's confided in someone about it. Because I don't think it's healthy to hold onto something that was that terrible and life changing the weigh of those memories alone could break anyone especially when it happened so young.
This memory...
This experience taught me very early on that you can't trust everyone, that they're some very bad people in this world.
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