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I hear the subtext when you ask “how can you afford it?” as if traveling and being elsewhere was determined a priori by social origin.

How can you, a person, on scholarships and work study, an independent paying for it all alone, how can you afford it?

I say it’s a grant and a scholarship and it’s a half truth. Because without the grant and the scholarship this would’ve been a dream and nothing more.

The truth it - I made the choice. I decided that I shouldn’t live my life limited by the definitions set out by others. It’s also a little reckless, irresponsible and economically un-sound to take out loans and forego a summer of work to travel to Europe.

But following the rules, punching the clock, getting that internship doesn’t guarantee a thing. It’s only irresponsible if the world worked rationally but it doesn’t.

How can you, a person that worked full time in RETAIL, afford college?

How can you, a person making minimum wage, justify going to places, seeing the world, justify dreaming?

I feel guilty living, I feel guilty buying coffee, I feel like I’m a ghost occupying a body that doesn’t belong to me.

And I hear it, every time someone asks me how? But I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. I just have to come into terms with myself. But every time someone asks I wonder, how did I end up here when everything pointed to not being here?

How can you, one of billions, think you can change anything at all?

By being a little reckless and irrational, by deciding to. This only became my life when I willed it into existence.