For the following five years, I lived in a kind of self-imposed exile, slowly teaching myself how to survive on almost nothing at all. I stretched every grocery budget until it nearly snapped, watched countless plumbing tutorials online rather than call anyone for help, and gradually mastered the delicate art of polite social deception. Whenever friends from church asked how I was “adjusting” to everything, I’d smile and nod along, quietly hiding the fact that I was skipping meals just to keep my own lights on through the winter.
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