It takes every last bit of my hope for me to reach this conclusion, and I am not sure where the inner voice comes from, telling me I need to pick myself back up. It feels like a supernatural phenomenon, this sudden clarity, but maybe there is nothing miraculous about it. Maybe this is what growing up without safety nets creates: someone scrappy. Just like I had seen my father do repeatedly throughout my childhood, I get knocked down and then get back up. My childhood was a how-to guide on ways to keep going. The one thing I had that most of the children on the Upper East Side would never have
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