Hope and I were just surviving. If you can even call it that. We were living in a friend’s freezing garage, in the dead of winter, with not a single penny to our names. No jobs, no plan, and no future. The world had already chewed me up and spat me out, and it felt like we were just existing, waiting for whatever came next.
But whatever little stability we had came crashing down when I made a mistake—one I still feel the shame of to this day. I took something I shouldn’t have, got caught, and that was the end of our welcome in that house. We were told to leave, and it wasn’t like I had much of a defense. I wasn’t trustworthy back then. The weight of everything was already crushing me, but at that point, I didn’t care anymore. I had no direction, no path forward.
That’s when they stepped in—Terry and Teresa, my so-called adopted parents, swooped in like fucking vultures, pretending to save us. They helped us move, offering to take Caleb in while we got back on our feet. You know, “just for a little while,” until we found an apartment, until we could breathe again. They made it sound like they were helping us. Like they were family.
We were desperate and stupid, and I trusted them. We signed the papers they gave us. They said it was just for medical reasons—just in case something happened to Caleb while he was with them. That’s what they told us.
What they didn’t tell us was that we had just signed full custody over to them. We didn’t find that out until it was too late. Hope and I finally found an apartment, got some footing beneath us, and we thought, okay, we can finally bring Caleb home. But when we went to get him, they said no. Just like that. They had our son, and we weren’t getting him back.
They set all these impossible conditions: a high-paying job, a car, proof of stability for months on end—all bullshit standards they knew we couldn’t meet. I was fighting a system designed to fucking destroy me, surrounded by Mormons, including the judge, who sided with them every step of the way. And just like that, I lost Caleb.
That loss destroyed me. It was the ultimate betrayal. Not just because they took my son, but because they ripped open every wound from my childhood, from the time I was abandoned, bounced around in the foster system. It was like they were trying to break me all over again. And they almost did.
Hope and I fell apart after that. We didn’t look at each other the same. She went to live with her mom, and I crashed at a friend’s place in another town. The fight was over, and I was fucking lost. I had to accept that Caleb wasn’t coming back, and as much as I wanted to fight, I didn’t want to rip him away from the only home he knew. He was only two when they stole him, and I was still a kid myself, barely holding on.
I had to move forward. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t have a choice. It was survival. The same way it always was.
