Hi, my name is Beth and my story might bum you out a bit, but I really need your advice. I don’t know my birth parents; they gave me up when I was really young. I bounced around foster homes before finally being adopted by this super sweet white couple. I thought I hit the jackpot, but I may have just found a nightmare.
My parents are very kind people, and I thank them in my prayers every night because they didn’t have to take me in but did. They have always been supportive and caring to my needs. Which makes the situation that I’m in all the worse.
I have two older brothers, Kevin and Dan; they are my parents’ biological children. They weren’t really happy when I moved in but I thought it was just because they didn’t want to have another child to compete with. It started off with small things like they didn’t want to play with me, or they didn’t want me around. It would upset me so much that I wanted to cry but my parents would intervein an comfort me.
Thinking that it would eventually calm down was a fool’s thought, as they got worse. They started to pick on my appearance. They would make comments about my skin and my hair. They tell me that I’m a freak. When we go anywhere as a family, they always point out to whomever we meet that I’m adopted and that they are the “real” kids. My parents scold them for this, but they do it all the time.
When I started school, they refused to let me sit with them on the bus or at lunch, they were even worse at school. They would throw things at me, tell people that I steal from them or that my birth parents were drug addicts and murders. They say a lot of hurtful things and even recently started using the “N” word.
I wake up each day hoping that this will get better, but it seems like they come up with a new way to torture me each day. Just today they put a chair against my door so I couldn’t get out of my bedroom and I was late for the bus. I had to walk to school, which I was late for and got detention.
They have been getting in trouble a lot at school as well. They start fights with people that tell them to not be mean to me, they yell at teachers that try to tell them off for making me feel bad, and they don’t do their school work and blame me to the teachers saying things like my “loud African drumming” keeps them away. I don’t drum!
It’s clear that they not only have a problem with me as their sister but also with black people in general.
I just want to be a family. I know that my parents are suffering because of this. They try to talk sense to my brothers but get screamed at. The other day Dan started breaking things and when my Dad caught him, he told him that I had done it. I couldn’t have because I was with my mother at the shops.
I’m scared that my parents will regret adopting me. I’ve contemplated running away but I don’t know where to go. I don’t feel safe at home and I feel even less safe at school. I’m really scared that they are going to start turning violent towards me as well.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep, I don’t want to eat, and I’ve noticed that this is really affecting my parents as well. They fight a lot about how they should deal with it. They don’t think I can hear them in their room, but I can. It’s just another thing that my brothers yell at me about. I regularly find my mom crying in the kitchen. She tells me that she has allergies, but I know it’s because of the stress.
What do I do? I don’t want to lose my parents, but I don’t want to hurt them. I really don’t want to go back to foster care, but I don’t feel safe around my brothers. If you have any advice, I’d really like to hear it because I don’t know what I’m going to do.
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