Meet Anne.

Meet Anne. Her name isn't really Anne, of course. It's just a moniker I can use to refer to this eager, hard-working 23-year-old. Anne grew up and went off to college against the odds - she tells her friends stories about finding treasures in the dump near a camper trailer where she once lived. Her daddy dumpster-dived for any vegetables her mom could use to make soup, or create some kind of satiety for the children. Finding a case of expired Twinkies meant a feast. Sometimes all the daddy could find was lettuce - even then, her mother made it into something remotely edible.

Sometimes her dad would push her mother; kick her, knock her down the stairs. To this day her mother has a debilitating back injury. Drastic, expensive surgery just eased some of her pain. Back then, Anne's daddy would toss money into a bucket of cottonmouth snakes he'd seized from the roadside. If her mother wanted to go grocery shopping, she had to retrieve the money from the bucket.

Many years after the split, Anne's father turned to God. He still didn't remember her birthday.

Anne's little sister fell in love with an emotionally abusive illegal immigrant, quickly becoming pregnant with his child. When her lover's mother came to visit, he made her sleep on the floor. She was 7 months pregnant. Her mother dealt with it. Sometimes, when you love somebody, you have to put up with their shit, right?

Anne met a man one day. He said he was from Italy. He told her he wasn't married, and that he was Catholic. He ended up being Albanian, married and Muslim. Anne fell in love; two years later he left her. He could never marry her, he said, because she was of the wrong faith. Her mother had told her that women have to overlook some things about their men. Anne overlooked the man's lies and suffered.

Now Anne has to learn how to support herself again. She has her bachelor's degree and is attending a free graduate school program, but she doesn't know how she's supposed to live. Even with a decent income she can't afford the various necessities we all have: shelter, food, health insurance, a vehicle, car insurance, utilities, a telephone. The bills each month add up to more than Anne's paychecks. There is no cutting back; there is no saving money. There is no money to save. A second job isn't an option - she already has one. A third job would leave her with no time to sleep - not that she is able to fall asleep. Anne has taken to worrying so energetically at night that she lies awake in bed, paralyzed, wondering when something will happen that will magically make life just a little bit easier.

But she doesn't want to depend on someone just for the sake of a place to live. She doesn't want to shack up with a man, then start making excuses for him when he treats her badly, just like her mother did. She can't find a roommate. She refuses to seek a lover for the sole purpose of affording rent. She doesn't qualify for any government relief programs. She's not a single mother.

She's just Anne.

No wonder she battles insomnia.