At sixteen, my mother told me to pack a bag and leave. Her boyfriend didn’t want “another man’s kid” under his roof, and she chose him. I remember standing on a curb in Manchester, 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 to sleep lightly and leave early, three jobs at once just to stay afloat. Hunger became familiar—not dramatic, but a quiet ache that made me forget who I was. I told myself I was self-made. I told myself I didn’t need anyone.
Now I’m thirty-four. I own a large house, run a successful landscaping business, and live a life I built with my own hands. Or so I thought.
Last week, my mother appeared at my front gate, smaller, folded in on herself, desperate. She asked to move in. I said no. Calmly, without shouting, I refused. That sixteen-year-old boy was still inside me, cold and abandoned. She nodded, handed me a thick, yellowed envelope, and walked away.
