It’s hard to remember the first time I was abused. I know I was young enough to play with paper dolls. Maybe 4 or 5, but not older than that. My best friend can remember my Mother coming into the house where we were and smacking me so hard that I ripped the arm off of my paper doll from the force of her slap. I know I was very young. I didn’t have anyone to protect me from this because nobody knew it was going to happen. My best friends Mother told my mom that “If she EVER laid her hands on me like that again” that she would be very sorry. I do not think that my mother cared. To this day I keep a couple sets of paper dolls packed away. They remind me of how simple my life was every now and then. I love my paper dolls. I used to love color forms also. So many things that I enjoyed yet my childhood was stripped away from me before I could enjoy it the way that I wanted to. How does one come to closure with the knowledge that their childhood was taken away because of their Mother and her addiction to drinking? How does one come to terms with the fact that this woman could be so cold and heartless to someone that was small and helpless? This is a pain that I do not know how to comfort. Instead, I simply remember my days of playing as a child, during the times that my mother dropped me off somewhere with my sister, where we would stay until we seen her again. But even then, the abuse was lurking…