Bummer Camp

by Ann Garvin

After distancing herself from her demanding childhood home and family when she turned seventeen, she didn’t think it seemed right to make new friends. Friends who might ask for help, people who she didn’t want to let down.

And that was when Cat realized that if you were in charge of someone, you’d better not have any needs of your own.

But loving someone wasn’t always about doing unto others as you’d have done unto you. Maybe love was as simple as showing up and doing what you don’t want to do.

She’d felt nostalgic, a little invisible, even experienced déjà vu, but never as if she didn’t have every right to be here and assert herself. This must be what it felt like to be a middle-aged white man entering basically every building in the US, except maybe Planned Parenthood.

“Money is a renewable resource. Family, truly caring people, are not,”