Magazine+Article+-+Amber

All I could think about was the way he treated me. He had hit me, he had raped me, and he had told me things that I didn’t think any ordinary person could tell me, much less the person who had given me life and the one person I was supposed to trust, my very own, father. He told me I was useless and that the only thing that I was good for was being his little play toy. That’s kind of sick isn’t it? He abused me to an extreme worse than I ever could have imagined. He played mind games with me and made me feel worthless. The first time he ever laid his hands on me, I was only six years old. I was playing in my room with my dolls and him and my mother had been arguing about money and he had already had a bad day at work anyway. He came into my room and starting throwing my things everywhere and I started crying. I was so scared that all I could do was crawl up into a corner and cry. When finally, he came over and picked me up and threw me on the bed. He raped me and made me swear I would never tell anyone, for as long as I lived. I honestly didn’t know what to think of that except that I couldn’t believe my daddy would hurt me like that. After that, things got much worse at home and I finally got put into foster care because my mother would also hit me and call me names. So of course, I felt like I had nobody in my life that I could depend on. After I turned 18, I decided that I wanted to become a child psychologist mainly because I knew that I could relate to a lot of the children who have problems at home. The tragedy that I endured as a child will forever help others and that’s the one thing that influenced my decision precisely.

Yours Truly, Patricia Smith