My Childhood

My childhood robbed me of being a kid.

I was on survival mode every day.

I was removed from my crack-addicted mother when I was six years old and raised in the foster care system. I lived in three foster homes and one girl's group home for teen moms.

The system may have saved my life, but that is all it did. Only my basic needs were met.

I lived with a preacher, a bus driver, a mailman and a daycare provider. I could not pick my foster parents, the same way I could not pick my birth mother.

I ended up in the care of people a lot like my mom. They were emotionally distant, bitter women who had suffered abuse as children. They were stuck with their own pain. Foster parenting, work and family provided a way for them to be distracted. Some of the men in their lives were cheaters, gamblers and, at times, violent. The women chose men who took advantage of them.

I knew how to spot dysfunction because I was in survival mode. I learned to assess danger when I lived with my biological family, where things could go from bad to worse without warning.

We lived in Dogtown, a neighborhood of Oakland, California. A typical day would start off with the adults drinking tall cans of cheap beer and wine. It would begin with laughter, but after the adults had been drinking and getting high all day and all night things would often get violent. They argued and fought over almost anything. The police were called to my house often.

I learned to listen and watch the adults and behave accordingly. If they were drunk and talkative, I would mimic their behavior and try to make adult conversation with them; if they were happy I would make jokes; if they were angry and violent, most likely all seven of my cousins and me would be into some sort of mischief. We tried to compete with the adults in the house. We never said words to each like "I am scared", so we acted out on our anxiety. We fought with each other a lot.

I behaved the same way in the foster homes. I was an actor. Very rarely was I able to relax and be myself — a child in a lot of pain.

I knew that the foster parents were not emotionally equipped to help me. I coped by telling stories about things that had happened in my old house, jokingly and showing no emotions. This helped me get a sense