At fourteen, my mom kicked me out of the house.
From fourteen to about sixteen, I was homeless the way kids are homeless. A friend's couch. A relative's floor. Sleeping in cars. Sometimes with strangers. Bouncing around, never knowing where the next night was. Crime, violence, and addiction were all around me the whole time.
There was no support system. No adult was coming to fix it. A fourteen-year-old either figures out how to survive or he doesn't. A lot of kids in that spot don't.
Kicked out at fourteen. Couch to couch, car to car. That's not a childhood, that's survival training.
I don't tell it as a wound. It was the first execution lesson of my life: nobody is coming. Whatever your life becomes, it becomes because you moved.