Hello everyone! You guys have probably seen my name pop up here and there and I would like to formally introduce myself! Why am I making this blog you might ask? Well a lot of you don't genuinely know who I am or much about me, so I decided that'd it'd be nice if I were to make a blog detailing such information.

For the couple new faces I've seen over the past few days: Welcome to the Community!

My name is Randy, I'm 20 years old and I've been a user since 2012. I did a lot of growing up and learning through this community and I would like to help you guys too. Before this gets in too deep I want to give a quick warning. This is going to be a decent amount of my personal life, and situationally might be quite sad. I plan on explaining and detailing things in the least sad manner as possible but figured I'd give you a quick heads up before we dive in.

With that out of the way let's get started with my life story!

As some of you may already know I grew up in foster care, legally speaking I'm still residing in foster care until I move out. I've been one of the more fortunate people to go through what's know to most as The system dun dun dun....

How does one get placed into said system? It's difficult and easy at the same time. Overall there are two ways a person is introduced into the system:

A: That child was born into it from the start. This is either from the government seeing the birth parents as unfit to raise the child, or because the parents don't see themselves fit to raise the child either because rid finances, or them just not being ready.

Or

B: The child gets put into "care" (The system) later in life. There are quite a few reasons for this, and I wish I knew the statistics of how many are each but I couldn't find them. With that being said some children are abused. Whether they realize they were being abused or not is another story. Not everyone gets placed into foster care because if abuse though. Some children are put into the system because of an overall decline in their behavior, mental health, or all of the above. This can be due to abusive parenting, poor parenting, or just the kid lashing out.

Now these two situations have one large thing in common: they are designed to be temporary. In situation A the system's goal is to find a permanent placement for the kid. In situation B the system's goal is to reunite the child with their biological family if they are seen fit to by technicalities "earn" their child back. If that isn't possible the next step is to try and find a caring and loving permanent home, if not at least a good home for the child to age out of.

As you can likely image I get lumped into that last category, but there's a lot more at play as to why I personally chose to go that route. Before I get to that point I'm going to briefly go over what happened in stages that led up to where I am, both relating to the system and my own personal growth.

There's no easy way to format one's entire life story so I will try and document this as digestible as possible.

When I was 6 months old my dad won custody of me from my mom. If you'd like the details on that feel free to reach out to me and I will tell you if you're old enough.

This immediately took my mom out of the equation for the rest of my life in regards to the system.

Life was fine for little old Randy between the ages of born and 6. Life was just peachy. And that was when DCFS got involved. There had been reports of my dad leaving me home unattended. Why was my dad leaving me home alone? To be quite honest I don't actually know but I presume he couldn't afford a baby sitter or anything like that. As for the legal proceedings that leda up to this next point I don't know them, I just assume they were followed.

I was taken. I was temporarily moved to live in a foster home. I stayed with them for about 6 months. I don't remember anything about them except my trip to Canada. I don't remember much of the actual trip but I do remember the smile I had across my face for however long I was up there.

After that I ended going back to live with my dad for a couple years or so. A couple more foster homes and it was clear I was never going back to him. I realized this when I was about 13/14 which is when I was placed in my last foster home. I was lucky enough to stay in the same foster home and attend the same highschool to get my degree.

Some of you might wonder why that family I lived with didn't adopt me. We had talked it over and it would've been less beneficial for both of us since my foster mom was retired and single. She got paid for taking care of me. I got an allowance, and by staying in the system I'd be eligible for more financial assistance down the road. So that's what we did.

I'm happy to say that in the coming months I'm moving out soon and I'm very excited to grow, learn and experience new things along the way.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions feel free to comment below! (Most things aren't too personal so ask whatever)

Also I want to add that I started working the week after I turned 16 and have held a job since then. So none of that abusing the system nonsense smh.