If I am lucky, I might end up a footnote somewhere. But I have never had that kind of luck. The luck everyone who stepped over me has had.

I was naive. I believed that if I helped people, they too would help me. Pay it forward. They took my kind words, my encouragement, my spotlighting of their work, and once they got what they wanted they shut the door in my face. You’d never know we were ever friends, before they entered the lighted circle of their peers. They bask in success, in money. I can barely afford supplies. I was left with nothing.

They will never understand what they did. They will never care. After all, I’m barely a footnote.