If there was something to get out of, some place or class, in many ways I am still there and perhaps always will be. I am there by choice, to some extent, appreciating its riches that shaped me—the wildness of a childhood untended, freedom from expectation, a robust, learned understanding of my own capabilities.

To experience economic poverty in a country famous for its abundance is to live with constant reminders of what you don’t have, like running a hot marathon next to a cool reservoir from which you’re not allowed to drink. [...]

I did not leave one world and enter another. Today I hold them simultaneously—class being a false construct, like any other boundary or category we impose. You don’t really climb up or down, get in or out. Mine isn’t a story about a destination that was reached but rather about sacrifices I don’t believe anyone, certainly no child, should ever have to make.