When I turned sixteen two years earlier, I got a used Honda Civic that I paid for myself. Half came from babysitting money. The other half came from a loan my father reluctantly co-signed. My birthday dinner was at Applebee’s with four friends.
I never complained.
That became the pattern.
“Myra doesn’t need anything,” my mother would tell relatives at Thanksgiving, waving her hand like she was complimenting me. “She’s so independent. So strong.”
People smiled when she said it.
They heard praise.
I heard the truth underneath it.
Myra won’t make a fuss, so we don’t have to try.
By the time I graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in computer science, I had learned to expect nothing. I paid off forty-seven thousand dollars in student loans by myself. It took me six years, three roommates, a secondhand couch, and more skipped vacations than I could count.
