I had a moment like this in my twenties when I was standing at a bus stop with a gorgeous young lady that I immediately felt some type of way about because she was everything I wasn’t. She was beautiful,slim, with impeccable hair and makeup and looked so well put together. My first thought was that her life is good and easy. She’s got it going on.

And then she spoke and how she sounded was so unexpected to me I had to laugh at myself. She sounded just like some girl from around the way, and it came to me that she was a “ghetto girl” just like me, and this image she created was just part of her “mask”, just like mine was. I started thinking of all the other women I’d met in my life who had appeared to have it all together only to find out some of the truly horrific things that had happened to them. Maybe they don’t have my issues but they still had issues and people they were dealing with that I didn’t have to worry about.