God, I'm spoiled. When I was a kid, I didn't necessarily think my mom was lying when she said that some day the sacrifices and getting by that we did would end up serving us in the future, but I'm not really sure I believed her, either. Now I can see that she was right. Sure, lots of bad things are happening in my life right now all at once, but I know that things could be a hell of a lot different than this. And all the times I bought the cheapest not-quite-but-almost-thing I wanted and wore my brother's cast off clothes and acted like it didn't hurt my feelings so much when all the pretty popular trendy girls at school made fun of me so that we could pay the bills and my mom wouldn't hopefully have to keep working that second job and getting drunk with her drug addict boyfriend on the weekends ends up meaning that my irritatingly perfect brother gets to live in a fantastic house in a beautiful neighborhood with his adoring wife and their [whatever the word for more than perfect is] child and I get saved from destruction and total rock bottom insanity and potentially losing everything I've been working toward since I was six and I decided that books and words _were_ going to be my life. I already knew I was a lucky lucky girl. Thank all sacred things that I know I'm a very lucky woman.