At fourteen, he ran away. Hunger gnawed at him so violently that he hallucinated food in the trash. He fought with dogs over scraps, once even gnawing at a rat's corpse before vomiting until he fainted.
When he woke, his body was shaking, covered in filth, lips split, blood dried on his teeth. He whispered:
I am less than an animal. This is what life does—it strips you until even your own humanity is stolen.