Chapter 2: The Chosen and the left behind

The day they tore us apart didn't just split a family; it shattered a mother.

The sting of smoke clung to the air, wrapping itself around every corner of our lives. It wasn't just fire; we smelled it was the burning truth of my parents' addiction, a shadow that had owned them for a decade. That day carved itself into my memory, the exact moment the ground gave way beneath me, and I fell headfirst into a world of doubt, pain, and questions no child should ever have to ask.

My mother didn't fight back with shouts or fists. She sat frozen in the wreckage of everything she had lost. The house was loud with strangers' voices barking orders, papers rustling, doors slamming, yet somehow silent all at once. And in the middle of it, she was quieter than I had ever seen her. Her face carried sorrow heavy enough to drown in, her chest rising and falling like every breath was a battle.

And yet... in her eyes, something flickered. A spark. The kind that survives even when the fire is supposed to be out.

That was the day she made her choice. The day she decided addiction would not be the last word. The day she chose to rise, to fight, to claw her way back to us.

It wasn't greatness you see in headlines or on trophies. It wasn't the kind handed to you after winning battles in the public eye. No, she chose a quieter greatness. The kind that forces you to confront yourself in the mirror of your mistakes and shortcomings, and rise anyway.

For me, it felt like something had been carved into me deeply, permanently.

The comfort of routine, of familiar faces, of arms that had held me through so many nights, was ripped away. The world turned upside down. The air, once filled with familiar scents, now felt thick and foreign. My thoughts were too loud. My emotions were a storm trapped in a glass bottle, rattling, shaking, screaming to escape, but too tight to let it all out.

I was too young to understand. Too numb to cry. The tears would come later, when my mind finally caught up with the pain. But somewhere deep inside, something small and stubborn began to grow. Not hope not yet. But a seed of survival, planted in pain, still reaching for a light I couldn't see.

I didn't know it then, but survival would become my only choice.

In the days that followed, the world fractured into nine different paths. My brothers and sisters—once a single unit, sharing meals, memories, fights, and dreams were scattered like leaves in a storm. Nine of us, now living nine different lives.

I was sent to South Bay, Florida, my father's old hometown. He wasn't there, of course. His presence had long since become a shadow. Initially, walking those streets gave me a strange sense of calm. It felt like the first place I'd been that didn't feel like it was trying to erase me. The first place that felt like maybe I belonged to something.

But comfort doesn't last long when you're a child learning how to navigate loss.

My last foster placement was with a woman we called Aunt Nag—ironically, her house sat just around the corner from my grandmother's. They called her place the bus terminal of the system. You didn't stay there long. You waited, suspended in limbo, until someone else decided your fate.

Of the nine of us, six were pulled into foster care's cold, unfamiliar arms:

 Me Marcus Sherida Channin Darrius Javian

We were processed. Documented. Distributed like files in a drawer.

The other three, Maurice, Tina, and Puncho, were spared. They found refuge with family, surrounded by familiar faces and voices that spoke their names the right way.

That's when the questions began to gnaw at me.

Why them? Why not us?

 Was it luck? Behavior? Circumstance?

 Did we not smile enough? Did we cry too much?

 Or were we just easier to let go?

No one answered. We never even had a chance to ask. So, we made our own answers that felt good in the moment, but always left us colder than before. Sometimes, that's more dangerous than the truth.

In the arms of strangers, I tried to rebuild what was lost. Each home had its own rules, its own smells, its own expectations. But the one constant in all of them was the same unspoken truth: You don't belong here.

So I adapted. I learned to shrink. I tucked my memories into corners of my mind like fragile glass I couldn't afford to drop. I learned to sleep lightly, to speak only when spoken to.

But even in silence, I dreamed. I hoped that one day, this chapter would turn. That maybe, just maybe, I'd find my way back to something that resembled home. Something that could fill the empty spaces left by my mother's absence. But home already felt like a photograph fading in the sun, blurred and slipping away.

Every hardship became a brick.

 Every rejection, a nail.

 Every uncried tear, a stone.

Without realizing it, I was building something. Not just makeshift homes. Not just a new life. But armor.

Not to hide who I was but to guard the fire inside me.

That fire had been burning for so long, keeping me alive even when I had no strength left.

And as the armor formed, I began to understand:

 I was preparing to fight.

Because stories don't end all at once. They end in chapters.

And the only way to move forward is to turn the page!