The "why" behind SKLTNSCTY

Growing up in foster care, you don’t really understand the impact of everything that’s happening when it’s happening—at least I didn’t. You’re just taking it day by day, minute by minute, as things come. You meet so many other kids just like you, with the same problems or worse. I don’t think I ever once thought about what the future would hold for any of us. I didn’t care. I don’t think anybody ever showed me why I should.

It wouldn’t have made much of a difference what anybody did or said to me; I think it was too late for me far before I was taken and put into care. I had already experienced what it was like to be hated by the very people who are supposed to love and protect you. Maybe I’m just too sensitive, or maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just broken, I don’t know, but I think anybody would be.

I don’t know why I let it affect me so much, especially now, but what people don’t understand is that when you’re born, there’s a split second before you start crying. In that split second, you’re looking for someone—anyone—to make contact with so that you know you're here. But what happens when there’s no one? Or even worse, what happens when that person doesn’t want you, doesn’t love you?

I think ever since I was born, I’ve been lost, looking for someone who could really see me. Someone who looked at me and made me feel safe, knowing that I'm going to be okay. But that person never came—not when I was 2, or 5, or 10, or 15, or even now. It just got worse, and then the possibility of ever having a family that would somehow fix what they had broken was stolen from me when they put me in foster care.

I have always been a big dreamer, stuck in a fantasy land where one day everything would just be okay, the world would find peace, and I would find myself and love me. But I hadn’t ever learned how to come down to the real world until bad things happened to me, and now I’m stuck down here in a world I was never prepared for.

So what happens when you were only taught how to hate yourself because your family only showed you hate? What happens when you're lost and forgotten, hurt, and you don’t even know where to start? They just label you a "foster kid" and start reading off all the statistics, but they don’t know the truth about any of this. They don't know what it’s like to live like this. The ones who do understand are dead, in prison, homeless, or on drugs.

The few of us who do make it out, I know they're trying so hard to change the future of how foster youth will experience life, and they are making moves. But the foundation the foster care system sits on is corrupt and unstable. Some days I have hope. Most days, I have to remember what the real world is like, and on those days, I can't help but feel like there's no point in trying to fix anything because we fix one thing and find five more problems. It is exhausting.

I don’t plan on giving up. The whole point of all of this—this blog, the brand, the advocacy, the telling of my story and sharing of others—it's all so that maybe I can help someone. Maybe make their life a little easier, teach them something so they don't have to learn the hard way, or maybe make them feel a little less lonely.

But today is one of those days when it all just comes crashing down—the weight and heaviness of it all. My life, and the lives and pain of so many other kids out there like me who didn’t make it, who never had a chance. My only friends and family are you guys, foster youth, system impacted people.. the forgotten ones and the lost ones. The kids who fell between the cracks.. 

 Im here trying to make it through this for you and with you . And if you feel like no one else does, I see you, I hear you. I know you're here. Im here with you. 

We are the Skeletons Of society

 but we are here, 

we do exist 

and we will continue to fight for our right to a better life.

together.