Chapter 14: Cold Blooded

Night after night, my thoughts drowned me.

The decisions I had made were tearing me apart. I had just made one of the hardest choices I thought I’d ever have to make. My soul felt empty. I was drowning in guilt, overwhelmed with emotion, and completely lost.

That phone call felt like it was sent by the devil to destroy me.

I was fighting battles I could no longer win. My mind wasn’t mine anymore. trying to outrun everything I was feeling. What I thought I needed in that moment felt far more important than what the system expected from me.

As I headed toward Oakland with my children, my phone rang.

It was the CPS supervisor.

I truly believed I was doing what was best. I thought taking my children to family would protect them.

Instead, she told me,

“If you don’t come back to Sacramento and bring the children, we’ll put out a warrant for your arrest.”

Without my newborn—the baby they had already taken from me—I had a choice to make.

Run with my children…

Or do what they told me to do.

I had no guidance. No support. No one helping me understand what to do next.

So I went back.

With the help of my children’s father, I couldn’t bring myself to walk them inside. I couldn’t bear the thought that it might be the last time I’d ever see them.

So I stayed in the car.

He carried them inside.

My daughter’s face was soaked with tears. She didn’t understand what was happening.

My son just looked confused.

And I sat there…

Consumed by guilt.

By anger.

By anticipation.

Never imagining that would be the last time I would see my children’s faces.

Life was falling apart right in front of me.

We were being evicted and me and my children’s father argued more than ever.

Nothing made sense anymore.

I kept asking myself…

What did I do?

Where did I go wrong?

When I looked at him, all I felt was resentment

“hate “

The love I once had for him had disappeared.

One day we went to a water park.

On the way home, we got pulled over.

He had a warrant.

They took him to jail.

For some reason, I looked at that moment as a sign.

Maybe it was time to stop trying to save everyone else and figure out how to save myself.

By then, my heart had turned cold.

I didn’t care about anything anymore.

My children’s father was in jail.

My children were gone.

I was losing my home.

Everything I tried so hard to protect… I lost.

“I was loosing it”.

My family stepped in to help, somehow nobody was considered “qualified.”

CPS suggested I go to a shelter.

But in my mind, I had family. I had somewhere to stay, I thought my kids

was supposed to with next of kin.

So what was really the problem?

Maybe…

I was played.

Or maybe it was the system.

I never really had the chance to understand what was happening inside my own mind.

To everyone else, it looked like excuses.

To me…

It felt like I was drowning.

Screaming for help inside.

I truly believed I was doing everything I could to get my children back.

Instead, every step felt harder than the last.

I was only twenty years old.

A victim.

Completely overwhelmed.

I didn’t know it then, but I would later realize I was up against a system that was much bigger than me.

I would finally read the court reports.

Line after line, they described me as if I were just another case number.

According to the paperwork, I refused to tell CPS where my children were. It said I would bring them back to court. It documented hearings, supervised visits, reunification plans, and deadlines.

But paperwork doesn’t explain fear. Me working hard to get the children back.

It doesn’t explain what it feels like to be three weeks postpartum, still breastfeeding your newborn, to have that baby taken. or just having a nice clean home , refrigerator full of food. then be told the rest of your children could be next. That kind of pain changes a person.

It doesn’t explain the sleepless nights, the panic attacks, or the way trauma convinces you that everyone is coming to take the only people you’ve ever loved unconditionally.

The files told the court where I was.

They never told them where my mind was.

To them, I was another young mother making poor decisions.

To me, I was a twenty-year-old girl who had spent most of her life surviving abuse, trafficking, violence, and abandonment. Nobody had ever taught me how to trust a system I believed was taking everything from me.

The reports documented every mistake I made.

What they couldn’t document was the pain that made those mistakes possible.

That’s when the drugs took over.

I stayed high because being numb hurt less than feeling everything.

The pills.

The cocaine.

The streets.

Anything that kept me from thinking.

The social workers scheduled meetings.

I missed them.

They scheduled drug tests.

Every time it was time to pee, I was dirty.

It wasn’t because I didn’t love my children.

It was because I was losing myself.

If you had asked me what I was fighting back then, I would’ve said survival.

Looking back…

It wasn’t survival anymore.

It was my demons.

I had nowhere to run.

No one who truly understood what I was carrying.

I was exhausted.

I wanted to disappear.

But who gives up on their children?

That question haunted me every single day.

I couldn’t believe they were really gone.

Instead of facing my pain, I built walls around it.

I blamed myself.

I ignored the very thing that mattered most…

My children.

And I went cold.

Cold to people.

Cold to love.

Cold to myself.

While their father continued fighting to get them back, I disappeared deeper into the streets.

The system would eventually label me a deadbeat mother.

No visits.

No phone calls.

No contact.

They saw a mother who walked away.

They never saw the broken twenty-year-old girl silently drowning beneath the surface.

I went cold.

But beneath that cold heart…

The war inside me had only just begun.