My name is Claire. I\u2019m twenty-eight years old, and I grew up in the American foster care system\u2014a fact that shapes absolutely everything about who I am today, whether I want it to or not.<\/p>\n
By the time I turned eight years old, I\u2019d already been shuffled through more foster homes than I\u2019d celebrated birthdays. Some placements lasted a few months, some barely made it past a few weeks before something went wrong\u2014a family emergency, budget issues, behavioral problems they attributed to me, or sometimes just the simple realization that the foster parents had bitten off more than they could chew.<\/p>\n
Ezoic
\nPeople who\u2019ve never been in the system like to use words like \u201cresilient\u201d when they talk about foster kids. They say it like it\u2019s a compliment, like we\u2019re some special breed of superhero children who bounce back from trauma with a smile. But the truth is a lot less inspiring than that. We\u2019re not resilient\u2014we\u2019re just trained. Trained to pack our belongings into trash bags at a moment\u2019s notice. Trained not to get too comfortable in any bedroom because it\u2019s probably temporary. Trained to stop asking questions about where we\u2019re going next or why we can\u2019t stay where we are.<\/p>\n
By the time the social workers dropped me off at the children\u2019s home that would become my longest placement, I had developed one unbreakable rule for myself: don\u2019t get attached to anyone or anything. Don\u2019t make friends who will disappear. Don\u2019t think of any place as home. Don\u2019t hope for anything permanent because permanent doesn\u2019t exist for kids like us.<\/p>\n
I was determined to protect myself from any more disappointment. And then I met Noah, and that entire carefully constructed wall started developing cracks from day one.<\/p>\n
The Boy By the Window Who Changed Everything
\nNoah was nine years old when I first encountered him at the children\u2019s home\u2014a year older than me, thin in that way that made adults exchange concerned glances, with perpetually messy dark hair that stuck up in the back no matter how much he tried to smooth it down. He used a wheelchair to get around, which seemed to make all the adults in his life treat him with this weird combination of pity and excessive helpfulness that clearly drove him crazy.<\/p>\n
The other kids at the home weren\u2019t cruel to Noah, exactly. They just didn\u2019t know what to do with him. They\u2019d shout \u201chey, Noah!\u201d from across the recreation room in that overly cheerful way people use when they\u2019re trying too hard, and then they\u2019d run off to play tag in the backyard where wheelchairs couldn\u2019t follow. They\u2019d organize games and activities that inadvertently excluded him without anyone seeming to realize what they were doing.<\/p>\n
The staff were even worse in their own way. They\u2019d talk about Noah right in front of him like he wasn\u2019t there, using phrases like \u201cmake sure you help Noah with that\u201d and \u201cNoah needs assistance\u201d as if he was a task on their daily checklist rather than an actual person with feelings and opinions.<\/p>\n
One afternoon during what the staff optimistically called \u201cfree time\u201d\u2014which really just meant unsupervised chaos in the common room\u2014I grabbed my library book and dropped onto the floor near Noah\u2019s wheelchair. He was parked by the window like he often was, staring out at the street with an expression I\u2019d later learn was his thinking face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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