All That Life Can Afford

by Emily Everett

It was extraordinary, almost disorienting, to feel bad for a kid whose weekly allowance was probably more than my family’s monthly income. But in a lot of cases, I did feel bad for them.

My parents hadn’t urged me to succeed and do well so I could have nicer things than them, or eat at nicer restaurants, or have more impressive friends. They had only wanted me to live without the strangling weight of worry. My mother wanted me not to have to balance my checkbook. To just know the money was there when it was needed. She didn’t want me to feel the exhaustion of it, every day, the way she had, draining the years from her life. My parents had just wanted me to be free, but I did not feel free; I felt like I was suffocating under a different weight. And I didn’t know how to get out from under it, now that I’d worked so hard to leave myself behind.

Mourning is pretty much a universal thing, right? We all have to do it, at some point. Everyone on the planet is doing it, will do it, but when you’re going through it, it’s only yours.”