Cassandra, three years my senior, married Eric, an investment banker from a wealthy family. Their wedding was lavish. Mom blew nearly $50,000 she didn’t have, claiming a daughter only gets married once. I was nineteen, working two jobs and going to community college, barely scraping together enough to afford a bridesmaid dress.

Then came the babies—Thomas, Natalie, and Benjamin. With each child, Cassandra’s sense of entitlement grew, and Mom was always there to bail them out, often at my expense. “Your sister has three children to feed,” Mom would say. “What do you need extra money for anyway—books? Can’t you just use the library?”

Meanwhile, I was working myself to exhaustion. Scholarships helped, but without family support I was a barista in the mornings, a tutor in the afternoons, and a data-entry clerk on weekends. Sleep was a luxury. Dad, after moving to Chicago and starting a new family, became a distant echo. Mom, honestly, made it harder for him to stay connected with me—“forgetting” to pass along messages or deleting his voicemails.