A 9 year old boy finds his mother dead in the driveway, and his father decides to put him and his brother, 2 years older, on heroin to help with grief. 5 years later his father blew his brains out at our local Walgreens. Their paternal grandparents were taken care of the two boys and I help them gain custody in 2014. I continually stop to check on this family, not related in any way, and I thought that I was witnessing elderly abuse, when in fact it was the older brother that was still doing the heroin and hoarding it over his brother’s head to make him do things. I witnessed so many foul things that I ended up taking the younger boy home with me and gained custody within 36 Days by the courts of Virginia. I am a single man in his late 40s at the time and taking in a child was nothing I ever saw on my roadmap of life but I could not just walk away. Over the next few years and a lot of therapy, the boy was off of drugs, or so I thought, and thriving in school and making some true personal changes.
He was starting the 9th grade for the third time and I managed to help along with his counselors at school get him through high school and just two years and he graduated on time with his class in 2021. It seemed as though he was turning out to be a well-rounded young man as he was starting college that August of 2021 double majoring in science and culinary arts.
This is the year that my entire world was turned upside down, again, when I found out that the young man had still been using drugs and that he had been stealing and lying to me the whole time. Coming to the realization that a young boy at the age of nine, having unfettered access to the internet, caused more damage than I have ever imagined. I hadn’t realized that he had learned so many dubious traits and was merely using me like a pawn.
As he was not related to me, we had started the adoption process and the young man had grown under my heart and when he realized that he utilized that to his every advantage and ended up truly using me.
After he started his first year of college and because of covid, the colleges were sending rebate or refund checks back to the home to cover expenses. Those checks came in his name and he signed them over to me and deposited them into the account to pay the bills and his supplies and his medical and anything else that he needed for his schooling.
My vehicle was stolen in September of 2021 and against some poor judgment I took out some loans for a vehicle at some ridiculous interest rates and I’m on disability receiving a fixed income. I only did this because some additional refund checks were coming in that would have totaled the amount to cover the cost of that vehicle plus some additional costs because we found out that the young man was wearing shoes entirely too big for him because he had wide feet and he didn’t even know what size shoe he wore and ended up spending another $1,200 because he needed all new shoes.
I did my very best for this young man to no end. I was left holding a debt that I cannot cover and it has swallowed me completely and depleted everything. I’m about to lose my home and everything that I have.
Just 5 weeks before those checks were supposed to come in, this young man walked out of our home, not on his terms and not because I told him but because he knew that money was coming in and he was determined to take it and run and that is just what he did.
He left our home January 5th 2022 and it is now January of 2023 and I’ve not heard one single word.
Needless to say I did my very best with him and also to keep all of my bills paid and everything on par but I got swallowed this past October by a massive amount of debt and now I’m almost at $25,000 in the hole just trying to cover the car loans.
I and now severely behind in my rent and all of my other bills as well and finding myself at the bottom of a pit and I don’t see any light.
There is so much more to the story and I’m sure that I could have been a better parent to him but I did the very best that I could.
There is a very real cautionary story in all of this and hopefully one day I’ll get to put it all down in words.
There is so much more than just loving somebody when you take in a heroin addict at the age of 13 that nobody could have ever told me about.
If you can find it in your heart, I would appreciate any donations that could be made.
Thank you, Sincerely!