After spending most of his childhood in foster care, Michael couldn’t wait to leave his group home. But that first night in his new apartment, he felt uncomfortably alone—just like when his parents had given him up years earlier.

To forget, he started drinking again and would stay out all night with friends or crash at other people’s places.

Michael entered the foster care system at age eight. While he’d spent some time with foster families, his last years in the system had been in a group home and he counted the days till he could leave it.

He resented being constantly told what to do by the staff. And he hated having to share one room with five other young men, never having enough privacy, and always having to protect his belongings from getting stolen or trashed.

While his initial years in the group home were marked with violent outbursts, alcohol abuse, and going AWOL (absent without leave), Michael became a model resident shortly before emancipation. He had grown close to his counselor, Carlos, who had persuaded him that Michael’s best shot at making it on his own was to take advantage of the education and development programs the system offered. Michael got a job, graduated from high school, stopped using drugs, and finally moved into his own apartment at age twenty-one.

As excited as he was by this freedom, Michael could not bring himself to stay in his new apartment the first night. Instead, he stayed out late and ended up sleeping on the floor at a friend’s house. The next night was the same story. Night after night passed. When he wasn’t at friends’ houses, he was in bars. Whenever Carlos or others asked why he wasn’t staying at his apartment, Michael would complain, “It’s too cold” or “It’s filled with bugs.” 

What he wasn’t telling them was that it was lonely and scary to be on his own. Alone in that apartment, he was emotionally thrown back to the time he had been dropped at the doorstep of the child welfare offices. He was flooded with feelings of abandonment and rejection. Not to mention that living alone was a completely foreign experience. As much as he had hated the group home, he had always had people around him. Now, there was no one. So Michael stayed away, and drank to help numb the feelings resurrected by this move.

Carlos finally confronted Michael and learned the real reason he was avoiding the apartment. Together they worked through Michael’s emotions and tackled the painful memories of abandonment that had continued to haunt him. Carlos also taught Michael how to make his apartment a real home. They shopped for groceries at local stores, met neighbors, cooked dinner, and invited friends over to hang out. Slowly, the apartment became Michael’s haven—no longer a trigger of past pain.