At sixteen, my mother told me to pack a bag and leave. She said her boyfriend didn’t want “another man’s kid” under his roof, and she chose him. I still remember standing on a curb in Manchester with a rucksack digging into my shoulders and something hard and final settling in my chest. That was the night my heart turned to stone. The years that followed blurred together. Hostels that smelled of damp clothes. Friends’ sofas where I learned how to sleep lightly and leave early. Three jobs at once, sometimes more, just to stay afloat. Hunger became familiar, not...
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