When I was a child, I was a ward of the government. I remember sitting in a waiting area at the end of a long hallway outside a cold, uninviting office. "I want to go home," I said angrily to the social worker who explained, in a calculated manner, that I wasn't allowed to because I now belonged to the government. Back then, I understood "the government" to be that office, and I didn't understand how I could belong to a building. I was shuffled through different foster homes, apprehended for reasons that, in my childhood opinion, were not sufficient to be taken away from my family.