I feel like I have to run as fast as I can just to stay where I’m at, and even then, I’m falling slowly backwards. Scrambling up out of the pit has been difficult, I thought. I thought I was making it. Turns out I was furnishing the pit.

I have (almost) every advantage. I am white, my husband has a trust fund, I am semi-likeable, I am capable of work. Boots don’t have straps, though, and pulling them up requires having them to begin with. Boots are expensive.

The American Dream is something you are born with, or not.