At a very young age, I was placed into my first foster home. My parents have always had a struggle with drugs and would go back and forth between if they wanted them or not. I have been in and out of foster homes multiple times, sometimes it would be with other members of my family, and other times it would be with this one really nice lady. I have been out of foster care for about six years now and have been living with my dad, but recently it's been going downhill. About a month ago, my dad overdosed, no one expected this to happen because he has been doing so well with not using drugs. Eventually, it all leads down to one thing, foster care. 

How the foster care system works is family and friends first, then random people. Obviously I didn't want to live with random people so I wanted to live with my family. The only available person at the time was, my aunt. My aunt, Elise has always been a very well-known person in town. Always helping out the community, people would say she is very popular. Me and my sister have never really liked her. She has always seemed so fake, always wanting attention. She was our only choice. We had to live with her.

This isn't the first time we have lived with her though. Like I said before we were constantly in and out of foster care so me and my sister have lived with her before. The first few times we lived with her, she seemed so nice and friendly, but then again we were at such a young age we wouldn't be able to tell if she was or wasn't. So much happened when we were younger though, so many things they didn't know.

When I was out of foster care at about the age of 10, I was always with my aunt. A good reason was because my dad's girlfriend was always so mean to me and since I lived with my dad and his girlfriend, I had to get alone time from her. I would always go camping with my aunt. I had so much trust in her, but there was my uncle. My uncle has always been on the weird side, always been creepy. I still trusted him though because when I lived with him he never did anything weird. But things started to get worse.

My uncle would always touch me inappropriately and I don't want to get into detail about it but it made me feel like I was in a dark, black hole, with no one. I never wanted to tell anyone because I didn't want to break my family apart. I told myself that I would never do that because my family would be devastated, so I stayed quiet. I knew no one could ever find out about the secret that haunted me for all of those years. 

I have been good about keeping that secret. It didn't really matter now because we moved out of my dad's girlfriend's house so I never had to go to my aunts and uncles anymore. It was just me, my sister, and my dad. I was fine with that, no one knew my secret. But ever since my dad and his overdose, I had to go live with my aunt because she was the only person that could take care of me and my sister, but that meant something else, I had to live with my uncle. So I took matters into my own hands and told someone about all that happened. 

This has been taken very seriously. I have been in random places I never even knew existed, getting interviewed, in and out of school, and talking with random people. Obviously, as soon as the state found out, we moved out of my aunt's. The state knew we couldn't live there anymore, it wasn't safe because my uncle was there. So we moved into a new home with a nice, loving family. Talking about my story to them made me think deeper about everything that has been happening. I have realized that my aunt has always used me and my sister for popularity and attention. I noticed how even if she did want to help me, she didn't believe me about what my uncle had done to me. Once she found out what had happened, she thought I was lying. She probably just didn't want to believe what she thought had been the “unbelievable”. Now I have grown confident over what has been happening and have learned for myself to always trust myself no matter how big of a risk there is. These past couple of months will change me for the better and will stick with me through my entire life.