Kyle
Kyle is graduating from high school and starting college in fall of 2008. SEA has helped him get the dependency waiver that he needs so he can receive financial aid without the support of his parents. Kyle is also getting help from SEA in navigating the college education system, and will continue to receive support as he goes through his college education.
I never knew what it would feel like to be in front of a superior judge trying to argue that I am not a bad kid. This is exactly what happened the day I decided to no longer let abuse dictate my life over educational goals. My mom wanted to keep me quite, she repeated the deceptive words that have held me at bay for so many years, “family honor Kyle, don’t make me look like a bad Mom.” My mother is one of the most complicated human beings anyone will ever meet. Dealing with constant instability and my struggle to go to college has been my life. Education has always been my main goal in this struggle. I feel like it is an escape, a way out, and a path to stability. The University of Washington is my choice to continue my education and my life and I do not want financial circumstances to come in the way of that escape.
My family has always been harsh on me growing up. My mom is a single parent with a few jobs and my older siblings and I were always fighting. My brother, was however, a little too brutal with his physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Child Protection Services became all to familiar with my family as the abuse and incidents progressed. My mother would remind us how horrible a thing foster care was, especially to young boys like myself, and that I could not break the family apart. After many fights with my brother and many trips to the emergency room, I did not want that mentality to hold much longer.
One day, we got into a fight about a remote control and he sawed down my door and threw me against the fireplace kicking my face into the metal plating. After I told my mom, she told me to go back to bed and she would take care of it. My brother then came into my room when I was sleeping, and beat me over my head and my body with a metal pole. The next day my mother asked me if I could stay home, and unlike other times, I told her I was going to go to school. The damage to my face and my body was so severe that the principle called the police and drove me to the emergency room at Harborveiw.
After many more incidents involving more diverse objects I decided it was time for me to take care of myself for once. I ran away from home the beginning of my sophomore year of high school (2 years ago). The time away from my family improved my life and also my grades. I felt accepted, and safe for the first time in life. However, all things must come to an end and the living situation reluctantly fell through, so I had to move back after a year of being away. I always believed that each time I ran away my mother would wake up one day and see the violence happening and protect me, like a mother should. The fear and the constant sense of panic that I lived in at my home was extremely detrimental to my education. I wondered how I could even focus on college when my own home was in constant upheaval?
During my senior year my mother and I got into an argument about her smoking under blankets. My brother lashed out, calling me a faggot and screaming at the top of his lungs that he was going to kill me. My mom got in-between us and my brother pushed us down. She looked at me and told me what I will always remember, ”this is all your fault Kyle.” How could the woman who gave birth to me not see what was happening to me? I knew that she was of course, wrong, and that it was not my fault, my brother simply took disagreements to the extremes of physical abuse.
I moved out and filed a protection order against my brother the last month of 2007. I went to court and stood beside my advocates and my family. Standing in front of the superior judge auguring my need for court intervention was the most nerve wrecking experience of my life. My mother told the judge that she did not want me anymore.
Even though all these negative things have happened in my life I have still continued to have good grades, healthy choices, leadership roles, community activism, and have been working to support myself. SEA is helping me get into college and find the resources I will need to be successful. I believe a higher will help me finally reach my full potential as a human being and escape with a head held up high and that I succeeded in advocating self-resilience.
~ Kyle
