AT MY STEPSISTER’S 500-GUEST WEDDING, THE FAMILY WHO THREW ME OUT AT 16 LEFT ME STANDING IN THE BACK LIKE I DIDN’T EXIST—UNTIL THE BRIDE SLAPPED ME AND CALLED ME GARBAGE WHILE PEOPLE LAUGHED. I DIDN’T FIGHT BACK. I JUST STOOD THERE… LETTING HER THINK I WAS STILL THAT HELPLESS GIRL. THEN HER FIANCÉ STEPPED IN, STARED AT ME, AND ASKED ONE QUESTION THAT SILENCED THE ROOM: “DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO SHE IS?”

At seventeen, I got my GED because regular school attendance became impossible when rent was due. At nineteen, I was taking night classes at a community college and sleeping four hours at a time in borrowed intervals. At twenty, I transferred into a state university business program on scholarship and nearly lost the scholarship the first semester because I was working too many hours to keep my grades where they needed to be.

At twenty-one, I failed statistics.

I sat on the curb outside the exam building with the printed score in my lap and laughed until a professor walking by asked if I was all right.

I was not.

But I retook it and got an A.

That became my method.

Fail. Adjust. Continue.