Chapter Four: The Hustle

There’s a kind of hustle that’s born from hunger. Not greed. Not ambition. Just the raw, aching need to make it through another day.

She didn’t steal because it was thrilling. She stole for reasons she didn’t understand, she’d already lost herself, she had no identity, she was nothing,  and nothing has no value.

The first time was a bottle of tequila from her parents bar. She told herself it wasn’t theft—the adults drank it. For the pain in her pelvis. The pain in her head. The pain of being awake. It wasn’t the first lie she’d told herself to survive, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Later, it was food. Then came the credit cards. The forged checks. The fake IDs. The fake passports. The web of aliases and stolen numbers, a labyrinth she built around herself. Not to hide, but to move freely as alters in a world that had caged her since childhood. She figured the world refused to see her, care for her, she had to create her own.

Somewhere along the way, there would always be someone who became a friend until she lied, But what is a lie? When she forgot, or had no recollection of an incident or event, she responds in a manner to protect herself. 

She was called a thief, it felt easier to wear than “felon,” or “victim,” or “inmate 07770-062.”

The truth was messier.

She helped people, yes. Slipped twenty-dollar bills into torn backpacks. Paid rent for a woman with two babies and no food. Left boxes of supplies behind shelters at night. But she also hurt people. Not violently, but still. Some of the people she stole from were just as broken as she was.

She hated herself for that.

She hated herself for a lot of things.





Courtrooms became as familiar as kitchens. She could recite Miranda rights backward. She knew the difference between a good public defender and one who just wanted to clear a docket. She learned how to plea, how to manipulate, how to say “yes, Your Honor” while feeling nothing at all.

And prison—prison was a revolving door.

She entered broken, left broken. Came back with fewer boundaries, and another layer of trauma, which made other inmates nod in grim understanding.

But inside those walls, she found a sacredness—a kind of family. Women who understood without speaking. And somehow, she could bring comfort to others, too.

Still, the guilt followed her. Not for the crimes, but for the cost.

Every time she was locked up, she was reminded of her daughter’s silence. Letters returned. Phone calls unanswered. She pictured her daughter reading the headlines. Hearing the names. Watching the mugshots pile up like a scrapbook of shame.

Theft never made her rich.

It just made her feel, high, sad, disgusted, out of control and in control. Until it didn’t.

Until she looked in the mirror and didn’t see a survivor anymore. Just a woman tired of running, tired of lying, tired of stitching together another version of herself from broken pieces. She could see the fragments but didn’t feel a connection to her own mind. 

She started to ask different questions.

Not What can I get away with?

But Who am I when I’m not lying? Is this the meaning of survival?

The answer didn’t come fast.

But it started with this:

She wasn’t evil.

She wasn’t hopeless.

She was trying.

And sometimes, trying meant knowing when to stop running.



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