Things changed. But some things never did - I just came to understand them properly.

[and he's hesitant, as he tries to find a way to explain without telling too much.]

...I can't presume to comprehend the decisions that were made about me in my childhood by people I barely knew, but my father gave me away for a reason. My master took me for a reason. So far as I've heard, my father owed debts, and I know my master would have never forgiven debts if there wasn't a way I could be used to pay them, or if there wasn't some gain for him.

But I didn't understand this, and so for a long while I thought I belonged there.