I’ve also been fortunate with foster placements, never hit by a kid or a parent. And despite what you see in pretty much every TV show or movie about kids in foster care—and maybe this seems like a total fantasy—I am here to tell you it’s possible to live a life in foster care and never get molested. Also, I am white, and I know that buys me a definite amount of privileged safety, because I’ve seen kids who aren’t white get unfairly blamed and accused of all kinds of shit that never gets thrown at white kids. I have advantages in place for when I’m on my own: thanks to my flossing obsession, my teeth are healthy (so is the rest of me—oral hygiene is the key to good health); I’m not dependent on any expensive medications or booze or drugs; despite the meth-birth debacle, I can keep my head above water with acceptable grades (not exceptionally good or dismal, nothing worth drawing attention); and most fortunate of all, I have had one social worker, only Joellen, almost my whole life. These things increase my odds of survival when I’m out.

I’ve watched kids without my good fortune get dropped out of care on their eighteenth birthdays and become one of five thousand every year who are instantly homeless. Alone in the world with a Hefty garbage bag of clothes and no family. No job, no experience or education to get one, no home, no health insurance, and a file full of justifiably angry behavior with repercussions that follow them and make it impossible to live. They carry the blame for every mistake the adults in their lives made to put them in the situation in the first place. Not their fault, but they suffer for it all.