her experience growing up in an orphanage

in like Middle School two policemen pulled me out of class and I'm like what's going on they escort me out to the office get us checked out and I see my great aunt great uncle and I'm like hey what's what's going on is it something bad and they're like you know being quiet and they say yes my brother and I are getting emotional we're like crying we don't understand what's happening like earlier that week I was reading Homestuck like on the school computers and they're like hey about doing that man I don't have I don't have any friends just let me go read the goofy gray people comic you know are they arresting me because I was reading homesuck on the computer I don't know just little middle schooler brain didn't know what was happening great aunt great uncle just kind of like skedaddle off back home we get assigned a caseworker and they start driving us off to um the facility that we're going to be sent to it was one of the really big ones called uh before I got it I thought it was kind of a nice organization because you see a Billboards around for it they help kids it was just something else it was pretty it wasn't great they forced us to go to church and have speakers like come on to the premises but the way they conducted themselves just wasn't really reflective of I guess a holy person's teachings they um we're just not nice people when did you realize your dad had a meth addiction around like 11 or 12 I started connecting the dots he was yelling at my brother about something I just getting really aggressive talking really fast raising his voice just being really hostile and I as the older sister felt a need to um step in and protect don't you know effing yell at him and he starts like foaming at the mouth and he grabs me by the head and he like throws me into the wall like repeatedly and I'm like this is not normal this is not okay there's something like deeply wrong with him and I remember like my mom talking about his prescription addictions and other stuff like that but kind of hush hush they like she didn't want us to know about it so I'm actually from Louisiana I was born and raised there until I was about like 10. I didn't know the reason why but my dad's meth addiction made it to where he couldn't get work anywhere in the area so we all went to Texas he was able to get work there me and my mom had a falling out so he like framed her for like domestic violence and stuff so she was in jail I'm like out of the picture me and my youngest brother our dad didn't really like trust us he just grew more distant from us until he was like okay you know things are like really hard right now I'm gonna drop you off at this great aunt and great uncle who you've never met and he's like okay I'll be back in like two weeks um he never came back the gray dead and great uncle like tried to make at work but they're like retirement age they're trying to like just do their own thing you know out in the countryside they don't want to deal with like two like preteens right they just um what's the word voluntarily like surrender us to the state they considered like keeping me and just shipping off my uh brother he can be a lot for one person I love him dearly but he used a lot to um live with but they're like we don't want to separate you and it had a lot of resentment for him for years after the fact as adults we're okay now we've reconciled and we've talked about that and it's it's fine now in Texas there's a lot of foster children at the time I was there there were more foster children than there were actual foster homes whenever there's not enough of those or your level of care is higher than a regular foster home can handle based on YouTube a placement basically an orphanage but they don't really call it that where they just kind of like send all like these dozens of kids to go live in this one building you'll get a caseworker they will try to get you the best placement that they can based on your level of care that you need you have like six to eight girls in a single like dormitory-sized room when they're like trying to figure out what to do with you for those first 90 days at that very first placement you don't have any Windows there's like no doors the lights are always super bright and whenever it's like time to go to bed one of the staff members just she sits on a chair in the doorway with no door in it with her clipboard and just watches you and the other like five or six girls trying to sleep so uh not so fun fact I can sleep through anything anything fire alarms can't wake me up super bright lights can't wake me up because you just get used to these like super crazy like sleeping conditions there's also like cameras like inside of the facility as well sometimes you just wouldn't be running water sometimes there would be like straight orange water like rust or something moldy bread just not just it was pretty it was rough the kids that do have visitation they take them outside and let them play outside and the rest of us gotta just like sit in the room and wait until they're done for like two hours we would take this giant um white pedal van to school so all of the kids knew um oh hey there's the uh there's the kids there's the uh there's little orphans coming through one time we were waiting we're loading up in the van just getting ready it was raining outside staff was in the front seat just waiting for everyone to get gathered up there are three rows in it I was in the middle row the girl beside me kept pulling the hair of the girl in front of me and the girl in front of me turned around and thought that I was the one who was like pulling her hair and she like smacked my glasses off so I jumped over the front seat just grabbed her by the head and just bashed her head into the side of the car the same way that my dad did to me it's really the only way you have to um not get walked over when you're in foster care you developed these um these groups you protect each other but you have to still defend yourself otherwise you're gonna get stepped all over one girl got pregnant and thought that if she like had a kid they would let her leave because clearly she can't raise a baby you know while in this group home in the system right all they did was take away her baby anyway so now they're both in the system like you can try and make friends you can try and do stuff with people like you can try to but it'll be weaponized against you we had a girl who was really into basketball she was really good at basketball and she just said something like some comment or something to one of the staff members who was being snied with her and she was like whatever I need to go get ready for the game in an hour the staff was like what game you're not going and just breaking this girl's heart because that was all she had was just this one sport that she could do this sense of like camaraderie and teamwork that she had which is just taken away at a whim there was a little girl who is about like five or six she got in she just lost her mom and her dad you know she's screaming she's acting out she's doing a lot at the time I couldn't really appreciate it but now I understand that she he's going through probably the hardest time of her life right now and there is a really big staff member and whenever she couldn't keep the girl under wraps she like sat on her she physically sat on this kid to keep her in one place so she would stop like running around and causing a ruckus in their eyes and my brother he threw a bar of soap at the lady to uh make her stop so she would direct her attention at him instead it sounds like something out of a Hallmark movie it's so it's so goofy but that's what it was before my brother realized he was he's trans he's my brother but back then he was my sister he thought he was um not straight and when the staff found out they would hit him with like a oh you know they turn they burn just really awful like commentary that didn't help anybody involved most of them did miss their families a lot of them were in there for petty reasons oh their parents got caught with some weed their parent is in jail for shoplifting or something just things that probably wouldn't really justify like separating a family and generally in foster care the goal is to get you back with your family they want to get you back with a relative they don't want to just ship you around to a variety of strangers until you turn 18 and then leave was that the last time you saw your great aunt and great uncle yeah I haven't seen him since then I only knew them for like a few months I really do hope they're doing well I think they just did the best that they could for their situation I was very mad at the time but I was a kid I didn't know any better was that the last time you saw your mom and dad yeah I've um I've not seen them in yeah 12 13 years went through a period where I um had some unhealthy behaviors and I would look them up on social media just to try and see how they were doing same old same old not making good choices for themselves just wishing and praying that they would change so I could try and have a family again but it's fine because there's many ways to forge a family I have my fiance we got engaged a couple of weeks ago love him very much I still have my brother I still have my friends you just have to accept that sometimes the people whose responsibility it was to take care of you in this world aren't going to fulfill that responsibility people can change people can do better for themselves but they're not they're just not doing that there's a girl named and she had really severe scoliosis the state wouldn't pay for her care so she would take this cardboard box and like make a panel out of it and like secure it to her back to try and straighten out her back and she was like 11 at the time the younger ones usually were able to get into a willing foster home so any young children that did get sent to group homes usually had pretty strong behavioral issues and they just weren't very well liked which sucks because I know it's not their fault their children they don't know any better that girl with the scoliosis was not very well liked the kids didn't know what kind of medicine they were taking they didn't know what it was called or like what it did they just knew the shape and the color and I was so scared to go on like antidepressants and stuff for a super long time because I thought okay They're Gonna Keep Me sedated and over medicated and it's just gonna ruin my quality of life and then I learned as an adult I didn't really need them anyway I've just going through a very difficult situation most people would have strong feelings of sadness during that kind of situation there's something wrong with taking medication you need to know what it's for and how it's going to help you do you feel kids being over medicated was a serious problem for sure 100 some of them couldn't enunciate sentences very well they would come in very hyper very full of energy and after a month or so of them taking medication at the suggestion of a psychiatrist on the payroll of the group home they would just shut down yes ma'am no ma'am go to their room don't do anything which is very convenient I imagine there were a couple of girls who they somehow managed to get a hold of phones and create Facebook profiles and they would say that they were like older than they really were to try and like date older men and I was like you are such a lie and a half you need to stop like tricking people so some people didn't know like me for not minding my own business at the time I was generally keeping my head down and minding my own so people didn't dislike me too terribly much some people just didn't like it like there was there was one girl who would always like pull my hair out of a ponytail like it's such a really tiny thing it doesn't feel like a big deal but it was constant it made me so mad I beefed with her a lot but for the most part I got along with people pretty okay around Christmas all the volunteers want to come say hi to us all the volunteers suddenly like love us and want to spend time with us there was one lady who came in this mom and like her five or six kids and they wrote us a song and they like sang us the song and those kids look so uncomfortable and like they so didn't want to be there which is fair because we were like what are you doing here they called it CIA children in action and I was like okay go off I guess we would be the kids you see I'm like it was like adopt a child Christmas tree stuff so you see like in the mall sometimes Good Samaritans would come and uh give donations and send them to the facility I got a Nintendo um 3DS one of those years and that was pretty cool played a lot of Animal Crossing I would hide my 3DS I would hide my couple of games I would generally just like open up the mattress and like stick it underneath there never had any issues um getting that stolen how did you feel about aging out of the system I knew from the day I got in it was gonna happen like it was scary you know you're pretty much just kind of sent on your own until good luck I knew it was gonna happen and I was mostly just looking forward to the day that I can choose where I want to live and I can choose my Social Circles and I can choose to do what I want to do whenever you leave there is this fear of ending up in a very similar situation you realize that you were pretty close to being homeless or being abducted or being in a really awful situation you drive by the Salvation Army and you're like you know that could be me after like one bad month that could be me after like one or two missed paychecks so it just keeps you kind of on edge about your situation and how fragile it really is how well do you think the system prepared you for life on your own it didn't I had horrible phone anxiety I couldn't like answer a door someone like knock on the door and I would like wait for someone else to get it until I realized wait I'm an adult now I I have to get the door it doesn't prepare you at all it's its own ecosystem its own rules its own laws its own expectations and it doesn't prepare you for the real world at all how do you think the system could be improved funding I guess have the funds to not shove six kids in a single bedroom have the funds to have hot running water and you're gonna see this um all across the country and not just Texas but Social Services is very starved for any funding these things are just not valued very highly in the United States so it's just a symptom of a much wider scale issue if you could tell everybody in the world one thing what would it be um just be patient life does get better [Music]

Channel: Syrmor

Views: 44,217

Keywords: vr, vrchat, virtual reality, story time, confessions

Id: 8H93tvJu4RM

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Zekava]

Yo I forgot about Syrmor, now I have a backlog of being parasocially intimate with strangers' tragic life stories as expressed through typically incongruous virtual avatars to go through