Personal Narrative: Childhood Adoption
It was a pain unlike any other. I have never felt this before. A scream builds on my lips, a cruel laugh sounds from the darkness. I bit back the scream, determined not to give him the satisfaction instead my silent scream resonates in my head. The smell hit me before the pain did. I did scream then, oh how I screamed. I screamed until my voice grew hoarse and still I screamed. I cried out until I could no longer until darkness clouded my eyes and I knew no more.
My story begins the same way it ended, with ice and darkness. It seems like a lifetime ago when my mother put me up for adoption. It was in the dead of one of the bleakest winters on record in Russia. She left me on in the darkened doorstep surrounded by ice and snow. I’ve been told it was a miracle that I didn’t catch my death from cold. When I was found in the morning, they were sure I had succumbed to the below …show more content…
freezing temperatures. The only thing I had with me was a, then, too big platinum locket inside held a single picture. A woman whose face was that of a stranger and whose hair burned as bright as flames. I have no clue as to why she left me, and who knows? Her reasons could have been as simple as she didn’t want a child. However, that seems unlikely as I was about 1 at the time, a little too old to suddenly decide to not want a child. Perhaps it was simply because I was too much to handle. I can’t say how many hours of my life I have spent wondering and trying to answer that simple question, the question that haunts everyone’s life and keeps them up at night. The question of ‘Why’.
Life in the foster system isn’t how many people think. It’s not some magical place where you get candy and within a few weeks a month at most you get a loving family and all is good and just in your world. It’s horrible. The staff don’t care, the kids have tired eyes that have seen too much for their age, their hearts hardened by the streets and after a while, if you don’t get a family then you start living on the streets more than you actually live at the shelter. The shelters are soulless places, places of stone and held a cold that had nothing to do with the weather or temperament. They give you a giant garbage bag for your stuff, almost as if they’re saying that your stuff is garbage and that you’re garbage. You learn to never trust anyone, to never leave anything except things that you don’t want laying around.
It is said that background checks are run on families that wish to foster a child, yet the evidence proves otherwise.
With parents that have seen the inside of a prison cell time and time again fostering children. From domestic abuse to rape, kids from the system have ended up in their hands. The foster system is a difficult place to make friends, because you can’t trust anyone, and people come and go all the time. You might see someone one day and the next they're gone like a distant dream. My own story isn’t any different than theirs. I lived on the streets more then I lived in a foster home. I had a few good homes in the beginning when I was young, and as I grew older the bad ones came. I wasn’t in the system long before my first family adopted me. Only half a year, they fostered me the summer following when I was put into it, a relatively short amount of time compared to some. I lived with them throughout my early years, thinking of them as my family. When I hit the spring of my 9th year I was put back into the system. I was so young that I couldn’t comprehend what had happened and
why.
When I was the system, I had it bad. I was unique, my hair was as red as the very heart of flames, my skin as white as a ghost. Small, skinny, quiet, not really getting along with others because I never talked. Wandering by myself, never smiling. Never really making any effort to connect with others. I always appeared out of nowhere, walking silently, and only speaking when I absolutely had to. Always keeping to myself, that’s how I survived. They nicknamed me Phantom, I was too quiet to be anything else. I never cried, never made a sound when I walked. I never made that big of an impact on others’ lives. I was just there, moving silently in the background of their lives, like a ghost. People walk on by me, never truly seeing me and that suited me just fine. My eyes have always been the most peculiar part regarding my appearance. They kept changing one moment they would be the deepest blue you could think of. So blue that it looked almost as if the sky got trapped in them. They would turn to the sky at its darkest hour. Then they would change yet again from that midnight blue to a strange dark teal as if the ocean decided to join in and mix with the sky. When they looked like the ocean combined with the sky, my hair branded with colour. It looked as if flames had a life. My hair would look like fire personified. My pupils made it so I saw better in the night with only the moon to light my way.
My story begins the same way it ended, with ice and darkness. It seems like a lifetime ago when my mother put me up for adoption. It was in the dead of one of the bleakest winters on record in Russia. She left me on in the darkened doorstep surrounded by ice and snow. I’ve been told it was a miracle that I didn’t catch my death from cold. When I was found in the morning, they were sure I had succumbed to the below …show more content…
freezing temperatures. The only thing I had with me was a, then, too big platinum locket inside held a single picture. A woman whose face was that of a stranger and whose hair burned as bright as flames. I have no clue as to why she left me, and who knows? Her reasons could have been as simple as she didn’t want a child. However, that seems unlikely as I was about 1 at the time, a little too old to suddenly decide to not want a child. Perhaps it was simply because I was too much to handle. I can’t say how many hours of my life I have spent wondering and trying to answer that simple question, the question that haunts everyone’s life and keeps them up at night. The question of ‘Why’.
Life in the foster system isn’t how many people think. It’s not some magical place where you get candy and within a few weeks a month at most you get a loving family and all is good and just in your world. It’s horrible. The staff don’t care, the kids have tired eyes that have seen too much for their age, their hearts hardened by the streets and after a while, if you don’t get a family then you start living on the streets more than you actually live at the shelter. The shelters are soulless places, places of stone and held a cold that had nothing to do with the weather or temperament. They give you a giant garbage bag for your stuff, almost as if they’re saying that your stuff is garbage and that you’re garbage. You learn to never trust anyone, to never leave anything except things that you don’t want laying around.
It is said that background checks are run on families that wish to foster a child, yet the evidence proves otherwise.
With parents that have seen the inside of a prison cell time and time again fostering children. From domestic abuse to rape, kids from the system have ended up in their hands. The foster system is a difficult place to make friends, because you can’t trust anyone, and people come and go all the time. You might see someone one day and the next they're gone like a distant dream. My own story isn’t any different than theirs. I lived on the streets more then I lived in a foster home. I had a few good homes in the beginning when I was young, and as I grew older the bad ones came. I wasn’t in the system long before my first family adopted me. Only half a year, they fostered me the summer following when I was put into it, a relatively short amount of time compared to some. I lived with them throughout my early years, thinking of them as my family. When I hit the spring of my 9th year I was put back into the system. I was so young that I couldn’t comprehend what had happened and
why.
When I was the system, I had it bad. I was unique, my hair was as red as the very heart of flames, my skin as white as a ghost. Small, skinny, quiet, not really getting along with others because I never talked. Wandering by myself, never smiling. Never really making any effort to connect with others. I always appeared out of nowhere, walking silently, and only speaking when I absolutely had to. Always keeping to myself, that’s how I survived. They nicknamed me Phantom, I was too quiet to be anything else. I never cried, never made a sound when I walked. I never made that big of an impact on others’ lives. I was just there, moving silently in the background of their lives, like a ghost. People walk on by me, never truly seeing me and that suited me just fine. My eyes have always been the most peculiar part regarding my appearance. They kept changing one moment they would be the deepest blue you could think of. So blue that it looked almost as if the sky got trapped in them. They would turn to the sky at its darkest hour. Then they would change yet again from that midnight blue to a strange dark teal as if the ocean decided to join in and mix with the sky. When they looked like the ocean combined with the sky, my hair branded with colour. It looked as if flames had a life. My hair would look like fire personified. My pupils made it so I saw better in the night with only the moon to light my way.