When I was a child, I was a ward of the government.
I remember sitting in a waiting area at the end of a long hallway outside a cold, uninviting office. I want to go home, I said angrily to the social worker who explained, in a calculated manner, that I wasn t allowed to because I now belonged to the government.
Back then, I understood the government to be that office, and I didn t understand how I could belong to a building.
I was shuffled through different foster homes, apprehended for reasons that, in my childhood opinion, were not sufficient to be taken away from my family.