Self-discovery
About a month and a half ago I left from my home in Texas, from the family that has been mine for 4 years. I left because that’s all I know, runaway when you have something good because something so good was bound to end anyway right. All my life all I have ever seen are the backs of people’s heads walking out of my life never to been seen again.
Growing up in the foster care system you are always on the move, you are never in one place for very long. Moving is a bad habit we get and unpacking in a record time becomes a skill, or not unpacking at all because what is the point? Even before I was thrusted into the foster care system, I was always moving. My family where nomads and we never settled. My point is that 4 years is the longest place that I have ever lived somewhere. Settling isn’t really something that I was familiar with, even in those 4 years I was never really stable.
Don’t get me wrong things where good; I was on my own, I had a job, I had my parents, my family, I just got an award for youth advocate of the year, me and my sister where starting to get along better. I wasn’t happy though, I isolated myself all the time, I pushed away my family and distanced myself from anyone trying to get too close. My biological family and I where once again in contact so that put a strain on me and my adopted families relationship. I knew it bothered them that I talked to my bio parents but I did anyway. My dad use to be my best friend before he gave up his parental rights, that’s something I wasn’t ready to let go. However, having two sets of parents was like being in a family with divorced parents. I was both of their daughters, I loved them all but you have no idea how hard it is trying to keep everyone happy. I had to make sure I did everything right and make sure that my biological parents where not feeling like I was ignoring them but I couldn’t tell them too much. I had to make sure they didn’t have any access to my younger brother’s picture so my adoptive parents wouldn’t get upset. I felt like I was being pulled every which way and I honestly had no idea what to do. I was so focused on keeping everyone happy that I wasn’t really happy.
So I left because I thought I would be happy if I just shut everyone out and came to California. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing because in all honesty I didn’t even know what I was doing. Coming to California wasn’t what I expected, it was if I stepped into a PG-13 version of the R rated one I use to live in. I won’t say much about what I have been living for the last months because that isn’t my story to entirely tell. What I will say though is that I learned a lot, I learned that people definitely cope with things differently, I learned that people are not always what they say they are, I learned that if you do not stop looking at the past you will NEVER be able to see your future, and that I am probably the whitest Mexican ever. Most of all I learned that not everyone gives up on you and just because you run away from people doesn’t mean they will leave you. When I left I got a reaction I wasn’t expecting. I knew they would be upset but I didn’t think that it would be to the scale that they really were.
Leaving so many foster homes and having to cut all ties from those people was a normal thing. So when my family was so livid with me and so worried about me, it honestly scared me. I didn’t understand why they were reacting the way they were, most of all I was scared of losing them. But I didn’t, my mom would message me even if I didn’t reply. It was weird and I didn’t know how she could tell me she loved me when I didn’t think that she ever did, when I was so certain that much to my dismay she wouldn’t want to be my mom anymore. In a life where you are always losing something you get tired of trying to look for it after a while.
So when I left I didn’t know what I was looking for not really anyway, I thought it was family, a relationships with my father, I thought I was in search for myself. What I found was the faith I lost in myself and God a long time ago. He sent me here to show me just because something is missing doesn’t mean it needs to be found. He and the past of me I hid away showed me that it’s time for courage, strength, and faith in myself and God that everything really is going to be okay. You can only look for happiness in yourself, in my short little journey to self-discovery I found out that it’s okay to not always be okay and to not always try to please everyone else. In the end its you against the world and you have to fight for what you want in life not hide from it.
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