I won't let you in on every struggle, but I'll tell you one.

I'm very poor. I always have been. But it has been worse. There were times when I'd stretch maybe 7 dollars over a week. Times when my only pair of shoes would wear thin and the holes would let in the elements and my feet would stay damp and the skin would peel off in a soggy rind. Times when I couldn't afford the thyroid medication I needed to live and I'd feel myself grow ever more tired without it, leaning into oblivion like a drunk on a bar, like a flower into the sunlight. Times living off scraps. Never begging--only stealing. Times pocketing my breakfast and devouring it in a grocery store bathroom stall. Times when people saved my life and times when they condemned it. Their casual apathy, their cold utility, the universe rolling its unyielding eyes through theirs.