They didn’t call it abandonment.
They called it protection.
A better path.
A placement.
A decision made in my best interest.
They took me from the chaos of home
and placed me into the structure of the state.
But the state wasn’t a sanctuary.
It was a system.
And systems don’t hold you.
They file you.
My First Case Number Wasn’t a Rescue
I remember the move.
The social worker.
The silence in the car.
The room I was shown.
The smile that didn’t reach the eyes.
I was no longer a child.
I was a case.
I was someone to be tracked,
monitored,
shifted,
and signed off.
There were rules, but no roots.
Meals, but no warmth.
Rooms, but no home.
And each time I moved again,
another layer of trust peeled off like old paint.
Systems Teach You How to Perform, Not How to Heal
They teach you when to smile.
How to answer questions.
How to behave well enough to avoid the next move.
But no one teaches you how to grieve the family you lost.
No one teaches you how to scream when the pain has nowhere to go.
No one teaches you how to build identity
when all you’ve known is being placed and replaced.
So you adapt.
You perform.
You harden.
And eventually,
you forget how to let people in
because you assume they won’t stay.
I Don’t Blame Every Carer. I Remember the Kind Ones.
Some of them tried.
Some gave more than they had.
Some smiled with their whole face.
But kindness inside a broken system still breaks.
Because even the kindest carers couldn’t stop the next move.
Or change the label on my file.
Or fill the hollow left behind by the cupboard,
the silence,
and the growing belief that love wasn’t something meant for me.
What That Did to Me Later
By the time I became an adult,
I was already a story being written by everyone but me.
I didn’t know how to regulate my emotions.
I didn’t know how to trust calm.
I didn’t know how to stay still in love
because I assumed it would be taken away.
And when the world finally did turn against me,
some part of me felt like it was always coming.
Because I didn’t grow up expecting safety.
I grew up expecting rejection.
That’s what the system taught me.
Not in cruelty,
but in repetition.
Final Thought
This isn’t about blaming the system.
It’s about naming what it failed to hold.
Because if I don’t name it,
I’ll keep living by its rules without knowing it.
And I refuse to let the boy who kept being moved
grow into a man who moves through people the same way.
I want to hold things now.
Carefully.
Clearly.
Consciously.
I was raised by systems that couldn’t hold me.
But I am learning how to hold myself.
And one day,
others.