Uprooted often, teen stays strong

Editor’s note: This is the final story in a weeklong series recognizing noteworthy graduates from the Class of 2016. This year’s series highlights “comeback kids,” students who turned challenges into personal triumphs.

By HILARY MATHESON

Daily Inter Lake

Faith Lharette Larson, 18, has been passed around among family members and across states so often that she did not expect to graduate today.

With dreams of earning a doctorate in psychology or philosophy, she has resolved to prove herself to those whose ill treatment she has faced throughout her young life.

“There’s a lot about the mind that we don’t know, and if we understood the mind better, we’d understand each other better,” Larson said.

Larson will receive her diploma from Bigfork High School today.

As a result of her experiences there is no place she calls home, and for now she expects that “every place is temporary.”

According to Larson, her father left her family when she was 3 and her sister just a few months old.

“There are so many stories as to why he left, but he never looked back,” Larson said.

At 10, Larson and her sister were taken from their mother and away from Hot Springs, where she had grown up. The sisters were uprooted and put into foster care, although Larson wished she could have remained in Hot Springs even without her mother. “I would have never left and I would have completed my education there, which is all I really wanted.”

As the clock ticked down, Child and Family Services contacted Larson’s father.

“They sent a letter to my dad and said you have 21 days to come and retrieve your children or we’re going to send them to court and their grandmother is going to fight for custody. And he came on the very last day,” she said.

Larson didn’t know much about her father then and still doesn’t today. He claimed to have been working in Dubai and Afghanistan. Exactly what he did, she doesn’t know. All he told her was vague and cryptic.

“I started to build this idea in my head that he was some sort of superhero and once he sent pictures and there was one of him on a tank, so I thought like, “You’re a hero; you fight.” I don’t know. I don’t know what he fought for, but I thought it was something great,” Larson said.

When he showed up for a scheduled visit with Larson and her sister, the image of the hero dissolved for the youngsters as they were confronted by reality.

“He came in wearing cowboy boots, a white shirt, a leather vest with dark blue jeans. His hair was slicked back. He was the scariest man I’d ever seen. Just big — 6 foot something — with icy blue eyes. It was terrifying,” Larson said.

The first impression of him on her 7-year-old sister was also upsetting.

“My sister had a glass of milk. The first thing he did was take a drink of it. My sister took the table and she flipped it and she went into the bathroom and she started crying. She had never met him before and this man came in and took a sip of her milk,” Larson said.

Her father was given a trial month to care for them, and he took them to Arizona, but it was just the beginning of more trouble.

“He took us down there and dropped us off with his sister,” Larson said.

Since he didn’t provide any financial assistance to his sister for their living expenses, she had to move in with another relative, Larson said.

“The [trial] month turned into five months and that turned into a year,” she said.

She was passed between at least three households. Her aunts and her grandmother became her guardians.

Her father’s absence became a relief as Larson considered him to be emotionally abusive. She dreaded being with him in public, where he would pick on her.

Eventually she moved in with her godmother in Woods Bay, where she has found relative peace for the past four years, except for occasional intrusions by her mother. Yet she still feels stuck in survival mode. It hasn’t helped that her sister decided to move back to Arizona, which worries Larson.

“She’s not making the best choices, and it was my job to make sure she didn’t [mess up] and I can’t do that,” Larson said. “In Arizona I made some really bad choices and I don’t want to blame it on the environment, but I do because if I lived in Hot Springs — even with what my mom put me through — it doesn’t compare to what my dad did.”

Larson was working to help pay for living expenses — up until she had to quit her job recently when her mother took back the car she used to drive to work.

“Anything I’ve ever owned, I’ve really had to work hard for. But I’ve learned not to own a lot and be content,” Larson said.

Bigfork High School English teacher Charlie Appleby said most students wouldn’t make it to graduation if they found themselves in Larson’s situation without a strong support system.

“A lot of kids would crumble,” Appleby said. “She looked deep down within herself and fought and said, ‘No, I’m smarter than that. No, I’m not going to fail.’”

Where many teens would be filled with anger, Larson doesn’t let it overcome her. Channeling her anger to improve her life is something Larson works hard at daily.

“I have a lot to say and I’m not going to get it out there by being as angry as I have been,” Larson said.

She is a fighter, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t fragile.

“I feel lonely a lot with the independence I’ve had,” she said. “I feel I’m a pack person — I need people and that’s the exact opposite of what I’ve gotten.”

She wants to leave an imprint on the world.

“This is going to sound cheesy, but I want to change the world really badly,” Larson said, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile. “I especially want to change the world with medicine for the mind.”

Larson also aspires to continue writing. Writing is her avenue to express her thoughts and experiences to the world. Most recently she wrote an alternate history of America as her senior English project.

“It’s an idea that I’ve been toying with since I was young. It’s an alternate history novella and it’s written in lyrical form — if the Native Americans had never accepted the pilgrims and built an empire,” Larson said.

Larson’s next challenge is going to college. Money is one barrier. She may not go to college right away. It may be months or years. Despite financial difficulties, however, her determination is steadfast.

“I’m going to do it at some point in my life. It just depends on when,” Larson said.

Hilary Matheson is a reporter for The Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.