Looking Back At It All

So I was born in a small farming town. I never had a father, but grown up. I had been told that he wanted nothing to do with me. In my house lived my mother and my grandma, although the roles were switches and scratched out. My grandmother became my mother, and my mother was just some woman that came home in bad moods, after being gone for days. Her bad moods were generally caused by her coming off of a high from whatever substance she took while she was gone. More often than not, she'd bring home a guy, who would become her boyfriend. I don't know why she always brought them home, because it seemed that no matter what guy it was, they'd ALWAYS fight. When I wasn't doing my hardest to not hear the walls shaking, I'd be begging my grandma to make it stop. But for some reason she always looked at me with a defeated look in her eyes. The one place I could escape was school. Even if not everyone liked me, I loved learning.
Everything was fine, until the 5th grade, when my mom went to prison. The teasing and bullying became so bad that I barely scraped by. My teacher ignored me when I sincerely needed help, and because of her negligence I now don't understand anything regarding fractions and decimals, and I need to relearn that part of my education. From there I barely scraped by, my attendance became very questionable, only showing up once or twice a week. I began to learn of my mom's reputation, how whenever those times I hid in the bathroom when she would be arrested, that everyone else in school would know if they looked at the police records. Why was I being punished for her habits? Near the end of my 7th grade year, my grandmother had a stroke, and she was the only person taking care of me. She started doing things like writing $100 checks to BlockBuster, and her speech would sometimes make no sense. Although at the time, we had no idea what had happened to her. She was finally convinced to go to the hospital, and I was at home alone, barely going to school.
Finally after having missed so much school, I was questioned as to why I was barely coming, and when I did come, why was I so late, and I explained to them that I was living alone. That's when they finally called CPS to inspect my house. May 27th 2004. I was put into a foster home. And I was in the system ever since. During my 7 years of foster care, I was bounced around home to home around 8 times. Last year, while in a transitional group home, I was given the opportunity to go to Japan, because the school I went to offered Japanese as a foreign language. I had my 18th birthday in Japan, and my host family was amazing.
I am now 19 and homeless, but trying to get everything together. I am back in that town I was taken from, only because I can do things easily from here, due to it's smallness.

I have learned to look at my past as lessons. I have learned from them, and it has helped me become who I am today.