I am jealous of my little sister and the childhood she’s got to have.
Her sister and she went into foster care when she was 13 and the sister, 10. She nicknamed her sister “Mon ombre” by the age of 7 since she’d follow her everywhere, imitating everything she did, said, as she saw something worthwhile in her to look up to, which she has yet to see for herself. Their first foster placement was like a dream, it felt as though everything they’d gone through was worth it for this chosen family they’d somehow been lucky to be given by the State. However, dreams only last so long and one has to wake up and realize that the family I thought would be my forever, could no longer bear to be around me after two years, as a result of my ever-evolving bulimia and self-harm. And thus began one of the most monumental periods of my/her life, one in which she/I was told that she could no longer stay with the people she got used to calling home for two entire years because they simply could no longer ‘handle her’. At the lowest point of her life, she was told she was no longer welcomed in what had then become her haven. When she thought things couldn’t get worse, they did: her little sister was still welcome to stay. All she heard was this: She was too broken for them to mend or merely upkeep. Had she been their biological child, they would bear with her and pull her through these dark times.... they simply would not let her go. However, she belonged to the State, she was just another broken black girl among thousands, nothing special, not worth their dirtying their hands for her. So, their interest in seeking her out of this dark tunnel she found yourself in waned quickly.
The next day, she had to learn from a letter that her sister’s choice was them- the ones they’d been living with for two years. The sister, ‘Mon ombre’, the only family she felt she had in this godforsaken earth, was leaving her too, for them. Reading the sister’s confessions, she found herself at her lowest point. Simultaneously being a witness in an ongoing court case she needed to testify in, she needed her sister, her shadow, more than anything now but she’d chosen them. Now she was being told that the family she got to know and love, as well as her own biological sister, deemed her unlovable and unworthy of their care. This shattered her and remoulded her whole being, in ways that she would never recover from. From the age of 16-17, she moved around more than half a dozen foster homes. Having lost everything worthwhile in her life, she acted up. She was unlovable, worthless, a piece of utter shit. Why bother opening-up to any of the families that tried to let her in? why exist? Why was she ever born? So, she smoked and drank and oh so much more. Anything that makes her feel whilst simultaneously forget, makes her burn into oblivion then numbness. Anything, literally anything to make the rolling of the Sisyphean rock up the mountain more bearable.
Now a finalist at Oxford University, studying Philosophy and French, she has a bright -albeit it being quite lonely- existence ahead of her. She has friends now, she smiles more, finds life quite worthwhile. Yet, recent news brought her back to her 16-year-old self, the one who thought so little of herself that all she ever wanted to do was disappear and find peace. She was told two days ago that her sister, was adopted. Whilst she has had to move around 16 different foster homes including, independent-living at the age of 17, with no Christmases and birthday presents, with no shoulders to cry on whilst going through her A-levels, her sister had the luck to be raised by a family who loved her, gave her presents at Christmas and birthdays, hugged her when she wept, drove her to sleepovers, cooked her homemade meals every night, gave her a normal childhood and now legally claimed her as their own. She is the representation of all the love and joy and childhood I could have had but never did. I am jealous of my little sister because she has and continues to have the childhood, I have always dreamed of having, prayed to God for, day and night teary-eyed, and yet never did and never will.
by Kay Kassanda
Kay Kassanda (She/They) is a fourth-year student studying Philosophy and French at Balliol College, Oxford. Now a care leaver, she was fostered under the care of the State from the age of 13. The piece submitted is part of her true story, with the third-person narrative used throughout mainly as a mechanism to disassociate and upkeep the integrity of the narrative. She wishes to go into the performing Arts and write more after her degree.
Instagram: @aukoeur