THE INSTITUTION age 6 to 10 years (give or take)

I was about 6 or 7 years old when I was placed at Buena Ventura Academy, an institution. This was a home for children difficult to place in a foster home. Some had medical needs some just had emotional problems, or they ran out of foster families. When I first got there I was scared. It was a whole new environment and I didn’t know what was going on with me. The buildings were very big. That night I cried and rocked myself to sleep. I just thought why doesn’t anyone love me enough to keep me.

I remember this one woman said to me ”No matter if you go to foster home to foster home, it is not that people don’t love you, it might be because they don’t have the time for you or the money but there would always be people out there to love you”. I felt like well if they loved me why do they keep giving me up. I didn’t feel like they loved me if they gave me up. I went from foster home to foster home until I got placed in the institution for about 5 years.

The building was green and white. The inside was all white walls with an orange flower pattern on the carpet. They had old radiators against the walls that worked really well. The building where we slept was a two story building. All the girls slept downstairs and all the boys slept upstairs. At night they would close off the stairs to go up or down so we would stay on our own floors. Everyone was different ages from about 2 to 18 years old. They tried to put kids in rooms that were about the same age. The rooms were big enough to slept 4 to a room. It had 4 red or yellow beds with pull out drawers and a matching small dresser beside it. We each owned a little corner of the room.

While in the institution I didn’t hear from my mother. I heard that there were people that wanted to adopt me but my mother said no.