To understand my frustration, you’d need to know a little about us. My dad worked hard his entire life as a postal carrier. He woke before dawn, trudged through rain and heat, carried envelopes up countless stairs, and pushed through the kind of exhaustion that settles deep in your bones. He did it without complaint, and in the evenings, he came home and asked how my day was.

He’d been a single parent since I was nine, when my mom walked out, unable to handle the grind of bills and responsibility. Dad never remarried. He poured everything he had into me—school lunches, braces, helping me apply to colleges. When I got into a good university, he celebrated like it was his own victory. But tuition was brutal. Loans stacked high. He helped where he could, but his own retirement always came first.

At least, that’s what I thought.