The way he said it stayed with me, I couldn’t shake it. The rhythm of his words, the way his voice broke. “Nobody loves me. Not even the woman who brought me into this world.
He was just seven, sitting in the backseat of my car because he was still too young to ride up front. By that age, he had already been moved from home to home more times than the number of years he’d been alive. And again, like all the other times, his belongings were stuffed into a trash bag.
No suitcase. Just a flimsy bag not meant to carry someone’s life, especially not a young boy’s. Trash bags don’t hold up well. They tear. And kids do too.
This move hit harder than the rest. He felt good about the last home and believed he might be there for a long time. But his foster mom said she couldn’t keep him. When I arrived to pick him up, he didn’t say a word or try to resist. He simply got into the car and broke down in tears.
Through tears, he whispered, “Nobody loves me. Not even my mom.” That kind of crying leaves a silence behind, like all the air had been taken from the car. That was Stephen at seven.
At nine, I remember how tightly he held his report card, his hands damp with sweat. We were headed to an adoption fair. He wanted people to see something good about him, something that might make them pick him. No child should ever feel like they need to earn love.
By twelve, he called me his best friend. I was just his caseworker, not someone who should fill that space. But I didn’t correct him. We were filming a news segment about adoptable kids. He smiled for the camera, hoping someone out there would see him and say yes. But no one ever did.
Years later, long after I left the agency, my old boss emailed me. “Stephen’s in a juvenile facility. Ran away from his foster home. You should adopt him.”
My heart sank. I had thought about it before. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t. Then came the worst news. A friend called to say Stephen had been shot and killed outside a party. He was just 18. At first, I didn’t believe it. In that moment, I realized without a doubt, it was him.
The news barely covered the story. Strangers online said awful things. “Another gang kid,” they wrote. But they didn’t know Stephen. They didn’t know how he’d trace words on my back with his finger at doctor appointments. The last thing he spelled was, “I ♥ U.”
His mom showed up at the funeral. I believe she cared for him, in the way she knew how. When we looked at each other, I think we both knew, we hadn’t been enough.
There weren’t any pictures of him as a little boy. Nothing to remind us of the life he lived. So I brought a few photos from an old visit with his brothers and gave them to the family. It wasn’t much. But it was something. Almost no social workers came. None of the foster parents.
I wonder, did they even know he had died? Stephen was ours. And we let him fall. He said no one loved him. But somebody did. Too late. Stephen was the one who broke my heart forever. Stephen isn’t his real name, but it belongs to a real boy who is no longer with us.
