I Was Never Supposed to Make It

I don’t remember the first home I lived in.

I remember boxes. Not big ones. Not the kind people pack carefully when they’re moving toward something better. Small plastic bags. Trash bags sometimes. Clothes folded quickly. Toys missing pieces. My life was reduced to what could be carried. What I remember is the feeling of not staying long enough to belong anywhere.

At two years old, I had already experienced loss. My baby brother passed away in infancy, and not long after, my biological mother could no longer care for me. I was too young to understand grief, but old enough to absorb absence. Something had changed. Something had broken. And I was carried into a system that would raise me before I even knew what that meant.

Between the ages of two and five, I learned how to leave without asking questions. County lines became invisible borders I crossed without understanding why. New homes. New beds. New faces. Different rules. Different smells. I learned quickly that nothing was permanent—not houses, not people, not promises.

I was temporary.

Each new house had its own smell. Some smelled like cigarette smoke and old carpet. Some smelled like bleach and silence. Some had children who stared at me like I was only there to visit. Some had adults who smiled too wide.

I learned quickly not to get attached to bedrooms.

There is something disorienting about not knowing where you will sleep next month. Children are supposed to measure time in birthdays and holidays, I measured mine in placements.

I don’t remember anyone sitting me down to explain why my baby brother was gone. I only know that after he passed away in infancy, everything shifted. My biological mother—already carrying more than she could hold—could no longer care for me.

And just like that, I became a file.

A case number.

A placement.

A responsibility passed from one set of hands to another.

At two years old, I did not have language for grief. But grief has a way of settling into the body anyway. It shows up in the way a child clings too tightly or stops asking questions altogether.

By five, I had mastered the art of quiet observation.

I watched adults carefully. Their tone. Their posture. Their patience levels. I learned that stability was not something you assumed. It was something you studied.

When I was finally placed under the legal guardianship of Bo and Carla, it was presented as permanence.

This is your home now.

Home.

I remember wanting to believe that word.

Because by then, I already understood what it felt like to lose one.

But what it meant was survival.

From the outside, we may have looked like a family. We went to school. We attended Sunday church. We sat at dinner tables. We smiled in photographs.

Inside those walls, I learned that words can bruise just as deeply as hands.

“You’re not smart enough.”

“You’re going to end up just like your mom.”

“You’ll never make it in life.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

The tone was rarely loud. It didn’t have to be.

When you hear something long enough as a child, it stops sounding like criticism and starts sounding like truth.

The emotional abuse was constant—small cuts that never fully healed. And physical pain came from places that were supposed to feel like protection. My sister Tiffany’s hands taught me to stay small, to stay quiet, to calculate the room before speaking.

I became observant.

Hyper-aware.

Careful.

Children are not meant to be careful. They are meant to be loud and messy and curious.

I became strategic instead.

I studied faces. I memorized moods. I learned how to shrink myself to fit whatever version of me felt safest that day.

By the time I was ten years old, I understood something most children never should:

Love was conditional.

Safety was fragile.

And permanence was never guaranteed.

Some children grow up dreaming about what they want to become.

I grew up learning how to endure.

I did not know it yet.

But I was surviving.