I am a woman - an African-American woman - in America. My history, or what’s made of it in textbooks, does not foreshadow bright futures. I come from a line of oppression, an epidemic of poverty, and a sick game of making do with what we’ve barely got to begin with. No, the cotton may have never slipped through my own fingers, or even those of my grandmother, but I have watched my family rise at the crack of dawn every morning, and bend and sweat and bleed, just the same. And that taught me that I am not afforded the right to dream. I don’t have the luxury of closing my eyes and reaching to the light of the stars above me. I have to stay grounded. As a black woman, I have to be the anchor of my family. As a black woman, I have to make sure we survive. I have to cook the pigtails and mend the socks, all after my day job. As a black woman, I cannot allow my people to slip further back in time, in mind or in material. The scale of risk and reward is skewed. I am told success is going to college and getting a real job - a career. One with guaranteed checks every month, raises every year, health insurance and paid leave. I am also told that I can be whatever I want to be, and I want to believe them - but the reality I’ve seen makes me question the truth of that statement. The hunger I’ve felt makes me afraid of spending all my money on a dream that may never come true. The homelessness I’ve endured makes me terrified of floating on only hopes and plans. The tears I’ve cried makes me weary of trying to swim with the possibility of sinking. I am a woman who is drowning in a sea of shoulds and cants, of realism versus ideals, of back and forths between being what my mothers believe I can be and following what I’ve seen them do, because dreams are not something we’ve been given a right to.