A letter to the former me

You are a 4-foot-six void of wonky smiles and auburn hair. You are the source of my soul, your origins and unwinding meticulously organised and redacted into 1287 pages - just for me and my future eternal wonderment. In each page, gathered together for me by a man I will never meet, I learn about you and the secrets you keep from me. 

I am a child of chaos. I am disobedience in a bottle, pressurised by a decade of what the faxes call 'Neglect'. These little stories in their hundreds detail a shameful history - it reads as a tired and boring situation. But it was real for you, wasn't it? You are an amalgamation of emotions you were never taught about, the ugliest part of both the people who held you. You are the solution you created for unsolvable problems. I flick through your emotional biography and highlight my biggest surprises - how was six years supposed to prepare you for the challenges I read about? Its a fair question, but you didn't raise it. Every thirty pages tells me of the same dreadful upbringing, devoid of stability in every area bar the documentation of it. You are suffering in human form - or so I want to claim... but the truth is we dont know each other. I think I know you, but you exist as a sort of nothingness in the back of my mind, and Im satisfied that you couldn't have expected I would be the outcome of your misery. So... all I can do is make an educated guess.  

You are tan and boisterous. You like crabbing at the beach and were jealous when Sophie learned how to do a cartwheel but you couldn't. You're six years ahead in maths and recently started taking a separate class for top-performing students, you even became a big sister. Every description of you shows how happy you are despite your circumstances, you can only come across as relentlessly optimistic. I wonder if it was optimism or a case of just not having any other option but to march on. 

I have to admit that people urged me not to ask for these reports about you. It was a worry that you may bring unrest to the family again. But I wanted to understand why we ended up so far apart - who could I have been if we were still connected? Were you worthwhile? Questions I could never answer. You are 1,287 pages of bad luck and dubious role models. I try to reach in through the paper; I fill in the redacted names that I know myself and it brings me a little bit closer to you. It changes things... Its never enough, and Im glad Im not you, but I hope that somehow you know your misfortune is not forgotten. 

  

''TO PLYMOUTH CHILD SERVICES, 

  

Maria has been moved to Aunts house and is now classified as a Looked-After Child. A Child Protection Plan review has been requested. 

  

[Redacted], Social Worker''