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Before you start reading, I want to explain this story. This is a creative story, not journalism.
Firstly, I wrote this story from two different perspectives. Diary entry #1 is from the perspective of me when I was 5 years old. Diary entry #2 is written from the perspective of me when I was 21 years old.
Secondly, the content of this story is based on true event in my life, however, any great story has some embellishments to fill the gaps.
Lastly, the italicized text within diary entry #1 is meant to articulate thoughts going through my head at the time, not actual words on paper.
That’s all! Enjoy :)
Dear Diary #1, 8/25/06
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
That’s my alarm clock going off at 7:07 a..m. I set my alarm clocks to odd times so I won’t be in the habit of oversleeping. I ran to the bathroom to get ready. The street lights from outside peak through the window and almost glow in the dark with how bright they are and how dark it is outside. I ran to my grandparents room screaming and grinning ear to ear. They know I’m excited. My mommy tells me to quiet down because my younger sister is still sleeping. “Sorry mommy,” I whisper. I quiet down and smile. Mommy smiles back and says “it’s okay, good girl.” Mommy walks with me downstairs to the kitchen.
I call my grandma “mommy” and my grandpa “daddy” because for the past 3 years I grew up thinking they were my parents and they are the only real parents I know.
SSSSSTTTTTSSSSSSSZZZZZ.
That’s the sizzle of the bacon mommy makes for me. She also makes me eggs and toast. I play with my Barbies while I wait for mommy to finish cooking. My favorite Barbie is Chanel who has really pretty long and curly hair. When mommy is done making the food, I scarf that down and run upstairs to get dressed. I come back downstairs and it’s finally time to start this new journey. My hands are shaking and my stomach feels like there’s clumps of Chanel’s hair swimming around in there.
My grandparents walk me down our driveway and wait with me. While we wait we sing songs and dance.
“Patty cake, Patty cake, baker’s man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and prick it and mark it with a P
Put it in the oven for the baby and me.”
Mommy sings nursery rhymes with me and it helps to distract me from the clumps of hair making my stomach feel queasy. I’m not being serious of course, although one time I did eat a strand of my hair but it was a dare and I didn't eat the entire clump. Anyways…it was gross.
VRRRROOOOOMMMMM. EEEERRRRRRR. PPPSSSSSSSSTTTTTT.
That’s the bus stopping right in front of my house. “The bus is here,” daddy says! The time has come! MY FIRST DAY OF KINDGERGARTEN IS ABOUT TO BEGIN!!!!!!!!!! CAN’T BELIEVE MOMMY AND DADDY GET TO EXPERIENCE IT WITH ME!!!!!!!
Wait, I'm confused. Why are they not coming on the bus with me? Why would they put me on this bus alone? Where am I actually going? Am I not going to kindergarten? Am I going back to a foster home? Did I do something that makes them upset at me and now they don’t want me? What did I do? When will I be back? Am I not coming back? Is this not my home? Is this not my family? Do they not love me? I thought I was a good girl.
I stare out the window and watch mommy and daddy wave at me from the driveway as the bus starts to drive off. I’m not sure if it was the wind coming in through the window from the seat in front of me or the fact that the bus just left without mommy and daddy but tears immediately started rushing down my face. My first thought was to tell the bus driver to turn around because she forgot to let my grandparents in, but then I thought about it more and I realized before I got on the bus they both said bye to me. Bye means I’ll never see them again. But why? The thought of mommy and daddy wanting to get rid of me like all my other foster homes did made my tears fall quicker and heavier. Again, I can’t tell if it’s the wind in my face but now it’s also hard to breathe. I thought my grandparents were different. I guess I was wrong. I bury my head in my knees for the rest of the bus ride.
VRRRROOOOOMMMMM. EEEERRRRRRR. PPPSSSSSSSSTTTTTT.
The bus arrives at kindergarten. Kids are crying, screaming, cheering, laughing. We all exit the bus and there’s a lady greeting us at the front door.
“Hello everyone! Welcome to your first day of kindergarten! We’re so excited to have you here with us! Who else is excited?”
“Me!” “MEEEE!!” “I am!” “ME!”
“MEEEE!!” “Me!” “ME! ME! ME!”
“I am!” “ME! ME! ME! “ME!” “Me!”
Not me.
I can’t wrap my head around why all the kids are cheering when we all just got separated from our parents. It makes me think their parents must have prepared them for this and gave them a pep talk. Some type of talk telling them that they wouldn’t get to see one another again but it would be okay. After doing some investigating and talking to the kid next to me, his name was Matthew, I discovered that not everyone has parents that send them away. I thought everyone got shipped off to different homes until they found the one that fit them the best. Like shopping for a new outfit or a new Barbie. But Matthew told me he has only lived in one house and I thought maybe Matthew just got lucky until other kids around us started butting in and saying they all have only lived in one house with their parents.
So it’s just me? But why? What makes ME so bad?
The rest of the day felt like a blur. After my investigation, I was just tired from thinking too much. I just want the day to be over, but the more I think about it, the more I realize when I get back on the bus I have no idea where I’m going. I don’t have a home anymore.
VRRRROOOOOMMMMM. EEEERRRRRRR. PPPSSSSSSSSTTTTTT.
The bus just got here. Everyone around me is screaming and cheering again. Not sure why they all love the bus so much. I Can’t relate.
What even is home when you think about it? Home is more than the place where I live. I think it’s about who I feel comfortable with. I feel comfortable with my grandparents. Or at least I did. Until they decided they didn’t want me.
I’m calmer than I was this morning. I think I have come to terms with it. I know they don’t want me. That stinks. I need to get ready for the next house. When this happened last time I wasn’t as attached because I was only in that house for around 6 months. It’s been 3 years now with my grandparents in our home. More like 3 years of lies. It’s okay though, I am used to it at this point.
Wait…what about all my stuff? What about my Barbies? What about Chanel?
Some time has gone by, it feels like forever. The bus turns on a street that looks somewhat familiar. I’m not sure how I know it though. The bus starts to slow up to a dusty blue house that stands out on the street for being the only house with color. As the bus moves closer I see a man standing in the driveway. He waves. The bus stops and now we’re all waiting for the kid to get off.
Is the kid going to get off? What’s taking them so long? Some of us have new homes we have to get to. Chop chop.
No one moves for a few seconds and then in the mirror at the front of the bus I see the bus driver’s eyes looking directly at me. We make eye contact and then she says “your stop hun.” I look around because she can’t be talking about me. Then I look outside the window again and this time I stare at the man longer. I can’t believe it. This can’t be real. How can this be? THAT’S MY GRANDPA!!
“DAAADDDYYYYYY,” I scream.
I hop up out of my seat and scurry off the bus. I run up the long driveway and daddy welcomes me with open arms. I squeeze him tight.
“How was your first day of school, sweetie?”
“I- I-“ I couldn’t get a word out before I burst into tears.
“Honey, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I- I thought you didn’t want me. I thought I was going away to a new home.”
“Ohh, honey nooo. We want you. We love you. This is your home.”
“R- Really? You mean it?”
“Yess,” *squeeze harder* “Honey it’s okay, you’re home.”
Today turned out to be a good day. It went from happy to sad to happy again. Now I'm sitting in my room and I told my sister I would play Barbies with her after I finished writing this. Mommy is cooking dinner now. I’m happy I get to be with mommy and daddy again. I think I will be here for a long time. I’m happy they didn’t want to get rid of me, that’s a relief. I hope tomorrow we sing patty cake again because mommy always makes silly faces when we sing it. She told me that the song was written for me because my name is patty. I’m not sure if I believe her, but that would be really cool if that was true. I’m going to go play Barbies now but I will update on what school is like tomorrow. Good bye for now! Oh and happy first day to all the kids out there who had a good first day too! :)
Dear Diary #2, 12/5/21
It’s interesting how all my friends remember their first day of school in a completely different way than I do. Yeah, we were all children so we obviously all had nerves going into it. My anxieties stemmed from something heavier than nerves; it was trauma. I didn’t know that at the time but I know that now. Whenever I ask my grandparents about what they remember from this day they always say “yeah you were nervous” in a nonchalant way. It goes so much deeper than me getting nervous on the first day of school. I was scared for my life. I had no idea where the bus would take me and I got attached to my grandparents house so I was worried the next house would be worse. I was scared I would never see my grandparents again. I was also insecure and couldn’t wrap my head around what I could have done that was so awful that my own family would want to get rid of me. The past few foster homes I was in I ended up leaving those and it made a little more sense since I wasn’t a blood relative. It could be argued that maybe they just didn’t make a personal connection to me and decided to give me away. But my own grandparents are my blood. What was their reason for not making a personal connection to their granddaughter? I was confused and frightened. There are things that my high school friends and even college friends do to me now that I react poorly to because of the trauma that stemmed from my first day of kindergarten. It’s difficult to trust people and harder for me to accept love. For the longest time I never knew why I couldn’t believe my friends when they would tell me how much I mean to them. Now I know it’s because when I was 5 and it was my first day of kindergarten, I was traumatized by the idea that my family no longer wanted me and no longer loved me, so they were sending me away. This progressed into me believing everyone felt that way about me. I know it’s all lies now. But those emotions I felt on the bus ride to kindergarten that day will never go away. I just have to cope with it.
Living in a foster home is one of those experiences that people can never truly understand unless they’ve been there themselves. I’ve had the pleasure of living in 3 foster homes until finally being allowed to live with my grandparents at the age of 2. Leaving the first foster home hurt me the most because I was a newborn baby and I was in my developmental stage, so I was extremely impressionable. At the time I had no idea why I was leaving that foster home, but years later my grandparents told me it was because the foster home was for disable children and after 6 months of living there, the foster mother didn’t think I was disabled enough.
It’s a back-handed compliment. What grounds are there to measure the degree to which someone was disabled? I’m not sure what disabilities the children in that foster home had but I can agree that my Russell Silver Syndrome, which is a growth deficiency, was not necessarily something that hindered me although it was technically deemed my disability. That being said, why kick a 6-month old baby out of your foster home when she clearly had no place else to go and was having a grand ole time in your house? If I could speak to Miss Ricky right now I would have plenty of questions for her like this and I would ask her why it took her 6 months to come to that conclusion. In a month I would have not made such a strong connection and leaving that foster home wouldn’t have hurt so bad.
The two foster homes after that were less memorable and most of what I know about them today is based on what my grandparents told me over the years. I don’t think I would have connected the dots between my hopscotch trauma (hopscotch trauma is my condensed way of defining the hopping around to different foster homes that I did as a baby) and my daily life now if it weren’t for my grandparents. My grandparents have scrapbooks of pictures of my sister and I throughout the years and for the first few years the pictures they have of us are polar opposites. My sister’s baby pictures are all of her laughing or smiling. My baby pictures are me with a straight face. My grandparents told me how distant I was when I first moved in with them and how I never smiled. They told me that whenever family or friends would come over and meet me that the company would just feel bad for me because I looked so depressed. My grandma told me that everytime her sister would come over that her sister would burst into tears every time she saw me because she felt like she could feel my pain by just looking at me. These are examples of what my trauma did to me as a baby that I would have never known if my grandparents didn’t fill me in.
Looking back, it’s those few words that changed the trajectory of my life. Those two simple words. I still think about those words today. Could be an awesome tattoo someday. It’ll make for an incredible story to tell one day. No one understands the magnitude of what those two simple words mean to me. No one understands why my first day of kindergarten was so traumatic, until now. But it’s those two words that ground me and bring me back to my happy place whenever I overthink. “You’re home” meant more to me than me being physically back at my grandparents house. It meant I had finally found people who loved me and people I felt I could call my safe space. It meant I no longer had to contemplate my worth or feel the need to impress those around me. It meant I didn’t have to play hopscotch anymore. My home is wherever my grandparents are and 15 years later I can honestly say I’m eager to go back home and spend my 21st birthday with the people who mean the most to me. My grandparents.
