Dear Mr. President,

What? Do you want me to start apologizing and crying for you? Well I’m not going to.

Yeah, that all sucks major ass and I definitely wouldn’t want to have gone through that, but it wasn’t my fault so I’m not going to say I’m sorry. So maybe your life does suck harder than mine, but that’s not to say that mine isn’t still shit. So I guess since you went through the pain of writing that tear-stained letter to me yesterday, I’ll return the favor and do the same. Minus the tears obviously.

Once I was born, my mom handed me off to my father almost immediately and proceeded to completely disappear from my life. I’ve still never met her to this day. My dad was a bit of a drinker already, but progressively got into worse and worse things. Eventually, when I was five, Children Protective Services came to take me away from him. And then I was stuck in the foster system until a couple of years ago. I wasn’t a friendly kid, so not many people ever tried adopting me. But I did have a couple of families throughout the years; none of them lasted more than six months, though, for one reason or another, and that left me back at a poorly run foster home.

But then when I was fourteen, this seemingly nice couple decided to adopt me. I don’t know if you know anything about the foster system, but it’s really rare for teens to get adopted – let alone one as troublesome as me. But this couple already had a few younger kids and they said they were ready to take in one that didn’t need all that raising that the younger ones did. And for a while, they were the best thing to happen to me. I had little siblings that took to me quickly and that loved me as much as I loved them; I had a set of parents that actually cared for me and that took good care of me and everything; I had a great family and a wonderful house and nice things. And for once in my life I actually felt like I was supposed to be somewhere – like I actually belonged there.

But then they found out that I was into guys. They were kind of iffy about it at first, but eventually accepted it. Well, I thought they accepted it. They really just tried to ignore it and wanted me to ignore it too. Then I started wearing a little makeup and experimenting with other more “feminine” things and they pulled me aside and told me that I had to stop doing all of that. They told me that they weren’t going to have that kind of influence around the younger kids. And they started blaming me for my upbringing; they said they realized it was a stupid thing for them to do, taking in a kid that someone else brought up, because obviously there were problems with how I was raised and that’s what was making me act like this.

So I tried being even more rebellious brought a couple of guys around. That only made things infinitely worse. My foster-dad Gene walked into my room one day and started yelling at me because I was holding hands with another guy while we were sitting on my bed. The guy pretty much just ran out and when he was gone, Gene hit me because of it. He whisper-yelled into my face afterwards, “If I ever catch you doing anything like that again, you are out of this house for good. No more warnings. The kids don’t need to see that kind of shit.”

Well, this day that he was supposed to be working late, I had another friend over. This time it was just a friend – nothing more – and he was consoling me about what had happened before and a couple of other things that had happened since. He had just reached out to give me a hug when the door opened and guess-who stepped in. His face immediately turned red as a tomato and quietly demanded that my friend leave. He was really reluctant to go because he knew what would happen, but I basically forced him to go. I didn’t want the same thing happening to him as would happen to me. So when he was gone Gene slapped me around some more and told me to pack my bags and get going.

I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I knew that I had to go somewhere, so I started packing. Then my little sister Brea kind of poked her head around the corner and almost broke my heart.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“What do you mean, Brea?”

“Well you’re packing clothes, so we have to be going somewhere,” she reasoned.

“Oh, honey, no we’re not going anywhere. At least, not together. I’m leaving for a while by myself. I just need to get away for a little while.” I wasn’t sure if she would buy that or not; she was always a bright girl, and could be really intuitive for an eleven year old. Well, my luck was really non-existent that day.

“But you’re only 17. That doesn’t make sense, Dante. Where are you really going?”

I sighed and kneeled down to her level, brushing some hair out of her face. “Gene’s making me leave. I did some bad things and broke some really big rules, so I can’t live here anymore.”

“You did bad things? I don’t believe that. You’re the nicest person I know!”

“Well these things weren’t mean, they just weren’t good.”

“I won’t let you go, Dante. You’re my big brother and I don’t want you to go, so you’re not. That’s it.” Before I could stop her she ran to the kitchen, where Gene was starting to make dinner, and I followed her down the hall, but stayed on the other side of the corner, hopefully out of sight. “Gene, please don’t make Dante go,” Brea begged. I could hear in her voice that she was close to tears, and that made my eyes sting. “I love him and you can’t make him leave. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have my big brother anymore. Whatever he did, please forgive him. Please let him stay, Gene, please.”

“Brea, honey, Dante broke some really big rules. I can’t just let that slide. He has to be punished for the bad things he’s done.” I wanted to choke at the bile he was feeding my sweet little sister. And he was doing it as if it were nothing; like he wasn’t kicking me to the street with nowhere to go.

“Then punish him some other way!” Brea yelled, stomping her foot down hard. “You can’t take my brother away from me!”

Just then, my step-mom Anne opened the front door and saw what was happening. She rushed over and knelt down, putting her hands on Brea’s shoulders. “Brea, nobody’s taking your brother away from you. Where’s this coming from?”

“Gene says Dante did bad things so he has to get punished and he’s punishing him by making him leave. Dante’s packing his bags right now because he’s leaving and Gene’s making him do that!”

Anne looked up at Gene and glared at him. When she looked back at Brea, she spoke in a sort of scary-calm voice, almost aiming her words at Gene more than Brea. “Dante is not leaving. Whatever he did was not as bad as Gene says. I won’t let Gene do that to us. This family will stay together no matter what happens. Do you understand, honey? Dante’s not going anywhere.”

“Thank you, Anne, thank you so much.” Brea wiped her eyes and hugged Anne before running back towards my room. I knew that’s where she was going though, so I headed back there too. She burst through the doorway yelling, “You’re staying Dante! You’re staying!”

Anne came in later, after an obvious fight she had with Gene, and talked to me about it all. She said she still held her ground that she didn’t want anything like that in her house, but she wasn’t going to let me be kicked out. She did make sure that didn’t have much of a life from then on, though, because they wouldn’t let me have anyone over, or go anywhere, or basically do anything.

And they avoid me as much as possible.

Oh, and Gene still slaps me around whenever I get on his bad side. So yeah, that’s how my life is a living hell. Not as bad as yours, but still pretty shit-tastic.

-Dante