This is always how they talk, people who haven’t grown up like me. They think of their side of things—charitable solutions, how obviously generous they would be, should the worst happen, because Of course! That’s what family does! But they don’t understand what it is to feel helpless in a system that makes it so easy to fall through the cracks, what it feels like when the lights shut off and you have to scramble for resources, prove your desperation. They’ve never swiped their SNAP card to buy groceries and had it declined. They don’t understand that I’m not only protecting myself from
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