[He] at heart did not treat me like a full human being. He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost. His friendship had no other purpose but to utilize me in whichever way would most further his own pleasures […] but I realized after a moment that it was entirely to be expected that [he] should take this view of me; that from long ago, even as a child, I seemed to lack the qualifications of a human being; and that, for all I knew, contempt […] might be entirely merited.