Well. That hit the fan.
I still didn’t understand why I’d been taken.
All I remembered from the day was looking for my school sweatshirt, and then — nothing. Just a sore back and the next moment was like I teleported to class. I tried to make sense of it, but the memory files in my head came up blank.
I really did try to behave. But when your only instructions are things like “just be quiet” or “just do as you’re told”, it’s hard to know what the rules even are. I tried to follow them anyway — and still got called naughty. I couldn’t win.
I was blamed for things I didn’t do. Or didn’t remember doing. But I was the foster kid. Might as well have had it tattooed across my forehead. Everyone seemed to know before I even opened my mouth.
But there were glimmers of light.
The village was tiny — a post office, a pub, a school, a church. There was even an old abandoned cottage that called to me. Every day I’d try to peek inside, daydreaming about what it might’ve looked like when someone lived there. Like it was frozen in time, quietly waiting for someone to notice it still mattered. I felt that way too, sometimes.
⸻
There was food. More than I was used to. Some of it was even delicious.
But then… there was the stew.
The stew deserves its own chapter.
Winter hit, and with it came the same bowl, night after night. Thick gravy, soggy vegetables, and hunks of meat marbled with slimy white fat. I tried. I really did. But one bite sent everything straight back up.
She screamed. Told me I wasn’t leaving the table until I ate every last bit — including the vomit.
So I sat. For hours. Sobbing. Gagging. Pleading silently. The stew didn’t stop. Gag. Retch. Repeat.
It’s not that I didn’t want food. I just couldn’t eat that. And besides — hunger and I were already well acquainted.
⸻
Back home, food had been rare. We always had coffee. Sometimes sugar. Milk if we were lucky. Anything out of date got eaten anyway.
What we did have plenty of — thanks to the pets — was animal food.
My sister Mia was like a mum to me. She’d sneak dog biscuits into her pocket, smear margarine on them, and call them crackers. I remember once eating a pig’s ear because someone said it was like pork scratchings. I didn’t question it. It was food. Sort of.
So no — the stew wasn’t the comforting meal it was meant to be. Even now, at 43, the smell of it can turn my stomach.
⸻
Then one day, the phone rang.
It was my brother. Shouting. Accusing. Saying I’d asked to be adopted. That I wanted to stay with this family. That I’d chosen them over him, over all of them.
I was horrified. I hadn’t said anything like that.
But later, I found out the truth.
It was my mother. She was the one considering putting me up for adoption.
And something inside me just… snapped.
My sister was still at home. My brothers were in care together, And me? I was too naughty for my mum, too naughty for the foster family, too much for everyone. I didn’t fit anywhere. I wasn’t wanted anywhere.
So I made a plan. A childish, desperate plan.
If being naughty had got me taken away, maybe being really naughty would get me sent back.
It didn’t work.
I told my foster mum I wanted to run away. She smirked and asked if I wanted a packed lunch.
Two years passed like that.
Then one day, a social worker appeared.
“We’re moving you,” they said.
I thought — finally. I thought I’d done it. My plan had worked.
But I was wrong.
What I got… was worse.
Missed a bit?
←Part Two – The Holiday That Never Ended
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Unwearing the Mercury 