Chapter Text
When I was young, maybe 3-4 years old, I was alone. Sort of. Most mornings, I would be woken by whatever woke young children at ungodly hours of the day. I would wear what I always wore, whether I had slept in it or not; it didn’t matter. I remember my clothes always felt... Thick. Like the original fabric had dissolved and left me with a mould of an outfit.
I do know that it wasn’t my size. My mum would buy a few sizes too big so that they would last me longer. Even the ‘new’ stuff wasn’t new, though. I don’t mean to say that the clothes were dirty because they were second-hand, but it was whose hand they came from.
She would always tell me that the charity shops were too expensive for us and that she didn’t even agree with their causes anyway. No. My clothes would be shirts her junky friends would leave behind or shorts she found on the side of the road during one of her ‘trips’. They would be run under the tap and chucked into the corner of my room.
The one real outfit I actually wore was something my Grandma had bought me a couple of years prior; it wasn’t like I had grown much anyway.
Most days, I ate stale cereal in water for breakfast, crackers with jam for lunch and whatever we had left for dinner. I could make the meagre food stretch for days when I had to. At four. I was a baby surviving on whatever scraps were thrown my way.
When the living room wasn’t filled with high strangers, I would watch the parade of school kids making their way down the road. I didn't know, at the time, why or where they were going, but I guess it was just an instinctual drive for human connection.
After a while, I got the confidence to watch from the doorstep. Then the front garden. Then one of the mums started slipping me food through the fence. She would give me a ziplock bag of apple slices or an orange. Maybe a can of veg if she was feeling generous.
It was the highlight of my day for weeks. I remember waiting in my room, playing with the few toys that had survived my mum’s rampages, counting down the hours. What kid gets excited over eating vegetables and fruit?
It went on for weeks. She would hand me food on her way there, pulled away by her own children, and chat on her way back, and she even offered to brush out my hair once. At that point, I think that the only time someone had cared for my hair was when it was shaved off. Eventually, I told my mum and she...
“It’s ok if you can’t talk about it, Mia. Take a deep breath and carry on when you are ready.”
...
When I started watching the kids again, the woman had watched me in the window, not daring to call me over or help. I like to believe that the window blurred whatever bruises littered my body. Or maybe she finally noticed the stench that came off me. The empty needles that covered the patchy grass.
Maybe she heard it go down. Covered her ears and pretended to forget me. I suppose if you pretend long enough, it isn’t pretend anymore.
...
The police raided our house over a drug charge on one of mum’s ‘friends’, but they had all fled weeks ago, by the time they got a warrant. They only found me.
Only me. Sitting, naked, eating the last of the mouldy bread, in a rat-infested kitchen, in a mouldy house, in a rotten neighbourhood.
The only thing my mum had left me was a teddy, too dirty to sell, and some old food.
I spent a couple of nights sleeping in the foster care office before they found a placement. They were kind, quiet, calm, and clean. One of them brushed out the matts in my hair while I watched TV for the first time without someone screaming in the background or on the screen. They gave me the first proper meal I had ever eaten.
I don’t remember their names, or their faces, but what they did, what they were was... everything to me. I hear these horror stories of foster placement and feel so grateful that those who took me in were doing it out of pure kindness and charity.
My Grandma took me in pretty quickly. I started school. Made friends. Ate healthy. Was loved.
I still shower every day, sometimes twice. My husband would say that I clean obsessively, and my daughter would complain that I feed her too many vegetables, but I know that I was saved from growing up to be someone I dread to even think about.
The rare kindness I was shown drowned out that constant fear and hurt. I tried to find the foster carers who looked after me, but had no luck. It was, god, over maybe 30 years ago now, and they lived a couple of hours away. It has always felt like I have forgotten something by not finding them.
“What would you tell them, if you could find them?”
What a story I would have! I would tell them that I founded a charity that funded free haircuts and clothing drives for poorer communities. I joined a support group for children of abuse and neglect. Helped others in their time of need.
I met the love of my life and have the most beautiful little girl who has never known a second of hunger and who spends hours deciding on what clothes to wear. I would say that I struggled in school, that I have a job I loathe at times, but it gives me the life I adore.
Overall, I think I would tell them ‘Thank you.’ That they helped me push forward. They made a real difference for me.
“That’s wonderful, Mia.”
“Thank you for sharing with us.”