This I Believe, by Brittany

This I Believe

I believe that every child should have a parent that cares for them. I believe this because I grew up without both of my parents as a child.

The first three years of my life I was with my parents. We moved to Brooklyn, New York. My father started selling drugs, and my mother developed a habit of doing drugs. I think every child should have a parent who cares, and one who takes care of them, because if you don’t you’d probably feel like me. I sometime feel like nobody cares, feeling like nobody loves you, feeling like you’ve done something wrong as a child that made your parents not want you and feeling like you can’t love because all you’re going to do in the end is get torn away from that special person that you truly do care for and love.

After about two or three months, my parents moved to North Carolina and abandoned me with my two brothers with my grandmother on my father’s side. When she figured out that they weren’t coming back, she called the police. They took my brothers and I and put us into foster homes. I stayed for a year, but my brothers were picked up within two weeks, because their grandmother on their father’s side came and picked them up.

When I was four I moved in with my foster mother named Brenda. She had a son named Michael; they made me feel like I was a part of their family as a daughter and a sister. We did a lot of things together as a family such as going to the mall to shop, and going to my favorite fast food restaurant whenever we wanted. We also went to Universal Studios & Disney World; I was so excited because it was the first time I’d ever rode in a plane. After we got back to the house from our last trip, about a week or so later, I was literally taken by strangers that called themselves my “kin folk”. It felt like I was being torn away from the only family I knew. When we got back to North Carolina, I moved in with my so-called “great grandmother”, she made me feel special and she made me feel like I was a part of her family (our family). She continued to make me feel appreciated, and happy. But after about six to seven years of living with her, she started to get sick. She could no longer care for me the way she could when she first got me. So, this meant I had to either go to foster care again or get tossed around again. This time, I got tossed to my grandmother on my mother’s side. Again, I felt as if I were being torn away from somebody I really loved. Since, I’ve been with my grandmother, I’ve been to eleven different schools, I’ve had over at least fifty to sixty different teachers, and who knows how many different classmates.