“Paperwork and Court Dates”

Some kids grow up learning their parents’ phone numbers by heart. I grew up memorizing court dates.

The legal system was like an unwanted family member — always in the room, deciding my future, but never really knowing me. I was a name on a file, a case number on a docket. Pages of paperwork told my story in black and white, but they didn’t say what it felt like to live it. Every time there was a hearing, the adults around me would talk in hushed, serious tones. I’d sit outside the courtroom, swinging my legs, pretending I didn’t care. But I cared. I cared so much it ached. I wanted someone to walk out of those double doors and say, “It’s over. You’re safe. You’re home now.”

No one ever did.

Instead, there was always another date. Another signature. Another piece of my life decided without asking me. I got used to the rhythm of it — the waiting, the hoping, the disappointment. It was like living in a storm that never fully passed, just drifted far enough away for you to think maybe, just maybe, you’d see the sun… until it came back again.

The hardest part wasn’t the paperwork or the courtrooms. It was how invisible I felt. I wanted someone to look past the legal forms and see the kid sitting there — the one with the knot in her stomach, the one who was just trying to figure out where she belonged.

By the time it was all “over” — if you can even call it that — I wasn’t a little kid anymore. I was twenty. Twenty years old, and still trying to untangle the mess that started when I was two. You’d think freedom would feel like relief. But when you’ve lived that long waiting for someone else to decide your life, freedom feels a lot like standing in the middle of an empty room with no idea where to go.

And maybe that’s the thing about court cases — they can end on paper, but the real work of healing takes much, much longer.