On the 29th anniversary of the day I was placed in foster care, I woke up at 3 in the morning with a head so itchy that it felt like my scalp was on fire. I’m no stranger to an itchy scalp; if I’ve gone too many days between hair washes, an itchy scalp results.
However, this was beyond too many days between a hair wash. This was something way more intense that no amount of tapping, rubbing, or even itching my head could relieve. It was so fierce that I couldn’t fall back asleep and even contemplated getting up to wash my hair, a feat that takes a minimum of half an hour, given the length of my hair.
I tossed and turned for a while before finally going into the bathroom to brush out my hair and apply oil to my scalp, which instantly provided much relief. As I laid back in bed, I thought back to that summer 29 years ago when I was constantly being woken up in the middle of the night because of that intense itching.
Then, it was because of a bad case of lice that was never tended to. With parents who were either absent or too high to provide help, I’d fall asleep crying because of the pain.
While I’ve never forgotten that in that season I had lice so bad it was eating away at my scalp, I had forgotten what that felt like until I was abruptly woken up that morning. As my son woke up and crawled on me for milk and comfort, I could only stare at him through the light of the moon shining in the bedroom window.
I couldn’t imagine, even for a second, not tending to his needs, neglecting him to the point where he was in pain or his growth was compromised. Looking at him, I realized that he is so far removed from that neglected little girl I was, and I intend to do everything in my power to keep it that way.
But the more I was reminded of the neglect I experienced, the more sad it made me. Sad because my son doesn’t get to experience grandparents, and sad because I never truly got to experience parents having been like caregivers to them. My childhood was far from ordinary, and the more I raise my child to have a normal childhood, the more I realize how much I missed.
I know I need to grieve the things I never had. The parents, the life, the “normalcy,” but I haven’t yet been able to, and I’m honestly not sure why. I guess I feel like while grieving what I never had, I am complaining about it, which becomes a slippery slope.
My childhood shaped me. From the trauma that I am still healing from today to the way I internalized everything as a way of coping. I bottled everything until I reached a breaking point and could no longer keep it inside. Once it was out, I started leaking the venom once stored in me onto those around me.
My absent parents had created issues in me that I couldn’t understand and, therefore, didn’t think existed. I often claimed to be unaffected by mommy or daddy issues, even though it was far from the truth. I was always looking for a place to belong, to be chosen. So, I behaved in ways that allowed that to happen. I became a perfectionist people pleaser who sought out validation through attention—particularly attention from boys and then men later in my adulthood.
The attention was like a drug, and once I got my first hit, I did what I needed to keep seeking it. This led me to be boy-crazy at a young age. In elementary school, I was pretty awkward-looking. No one knew what to do with my thick, unruly hair, and having been one of several foster kids in the home, my clothes were often thrifted.
Because I was so skinny and not into style, I wasn’t ever too happy with the way I looked, which was icing on the cake when it came to my low self-esteem. By the time I was in high school, I had picked up a few tricks from my older sister and best friend, and aside from the cringe makeup trends from my high school days, I wasn’t as awkward as I had once been.
What I had also forgotten regarding this trauma anniversary was that about nine years later, I would end up willingly leaving what had become my family and my home to follow a boy. And while that was, to a degree, difficult, what was most difficult was leaving my brothers.
In particular, my brother, who I had entered foster care with. I had forgotten how much leaving him felt like the original trauma all over again. I felt like I was betraying him by leaving him. Even though I tried to remind myself that he was not my responsibility as I was not his parent, having been responsible for him for so long, it was hard to believe. He was understanding and supportive, but even so, I cried most over him.
What also had gotten lost amid memory suppression was how, fourteen years after moving out of my childhood home, I had moved into a house I bought with a man that I never should have dated in the first place. It was great until it wasn’t, and the fall after closing on the house, he started to show his true colors (or perhaps I had already seen it but refused to accept it).
Nonetheless, much like I had hit a breaking point and everything bottled in me started spewing out, the same happened to him as well, leaving me the target.
Somehow, just realizing these memories all occurring during the same time of year as being put into foster care provided comfort. But it also made me realize that there was so much more than just that trauma anniversary that I now need to process: the life my trauma had pushed me into.