That’s how I ended up at the State Home in Indiana two months later.
I hated the State Home. I hated the people that had brought me here. I hated my stepdad and his wife for once again betraying me. Most of all, I loathed myself. There could only be one reason why I was at the State Home. I knew deep down inside that being there was my fault. It had to be…there had to be a reason that no one loved me.
Just a few hours earlier, my best friend, Dee, and I had been planning on shopping at the store. Dee was going to purchase her mother a red rose. Dee tried to do special things like that for her mother. I envied her relationship with her mom, because they were close. Dee respected her mother, which is something I could not feel towards mine. She adored her mother and her mother loved her back.
Why didn’t anyone love me?
I observed the other children inside the home my age. Most of them were runaways and thugs. Some had been brought there more than once. Some had even ran away from this place and then found their way back a few weeks or even days later. Most of the kids my age had probably experimented with drugs at one time or another. I had so much in common with them, and yet I felt so out of place–I didn’t belong there.
After receiving my backpack back and filling out all the paperwork, one of the social workers led me up a musty and slightly damp wooden staircase. At the top of the staircase was a large room lined on both sides with bunk beds. There were two empty beds—one near the door and one on the other side of the room in front of the window and closest to the camera. I could choose the bed I wanted. I chose the upper bunk nearest the security camera, because I thought that bed would give me more control over privacy from the camera’s angle. I put my belongings into the dresser next to the bunk. I filled half a drawer. I placed my journal under my pillow in an effort to conceal it. I was afraid someone would try to take it away.
My first journal entry while at the home was written in Spanish so no one would understand it. It reads:
“20 November 1996
Diary,
I feel like dying. My stepfather and his wife put me into this guardian’s home. I don’t know why. I want to go home, to die possibly. I don’t have a family anymore. My only home is in Heaven, but my stepfather and his wife would rather me go to Hell, I believe. Where is my life? I don’t have one anymore. It is ten o’clock. I went to my home after school and thirty minutes later, there was a police officer at my home. He said I had to go with them here. Possibly, God is going to put me in another home. I want to talk on the phone, but the people here say I cannot. Tomorrow, I will wait. Tomorrow, I am going to talk with a social worker here. It’s possible that if I talk to my mother, and she is okay with it, the social workers will give me to her. I am going to be in Texas later, and then hopefully I can live with my friend–I want to call my Mia Maid advisor on the telephone tomorrow. God is going to make good things happen–I believe.”
The faith I had even at that age. I had found that the Lord was the only One I could put my trust in. I believed God would turn things around for me. My belief in a Supreme Being was the only Thing that I could put my trust in as everyone else had betrayed me to this point. I still read the words I wrote in desperation that night with amazement.
However, I wasn’t moving to Texas.
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