The worldwide shutdown of society has affected many people in a variety of different ways, but I’ve struggled in some very unique ways. In February of 2020, only a month before COVID shut the world down, I went into foster care. It was a drastic transition, going from my home of seventeen and a half years to a foster home. I was ripped out of everything I had ever known in the space of just a few hours.

I was lucky by normal foster care kids standards. I went directly to the home of people I knew, the family of one of my closest friends. I thought I’d remain there for the next two years until I went off to college. It felt like home in a way I’d never had. But then DFCS, the agency that runs foster care, decided to move me to a group home in Stone Mountain. It was hectic. I had everything I’d ever known taken away, and I was in an entirely unfamiliar environment in another part of the state.

I had to grow in a dramatic way. I’d lived my whole life relatively isolated, kept away from others, so I didn’t have developed social skills or knowledge of how other people work. Most people gain knowledge of human interaction by just living and growing. I had to condense what takes others a decade and a half into one year.

I’ve still got a ways to grow, but so does everyone else. I’m a very different person now. I found friends and people I call family along the way. I’ve learned and grown to become an almost unrecognizable person who’s dramatically different than I was before the pandemic. The man walking in the doors of a college classroom today is so much more than the kid who walked over the threshold of a group home ever thought he could be.