"I wish I never had you."

"You talk in riddles."

"Can't you talk intelligent?"

My mother said these words to me more than times than I can count.

I thought it was normal.

I learned it was not.

This is my story.

I didn't speak until I was five. At age six, I was put in special education and called a 'retard' by my own brothers.

I was autistic, but no one knew it. Except God knew. At six years old, He told me He was watching over me. I didn't even know who God was, except by the spitting remarks my mother made about religion at the dinner table.

At seven I was abused by my friend's 19-year-old cousin. At ten my mother punched me in the face with her closed fist, blaming me for something I didn't do. Realizing she would never love me, I no longer wanted to live. I handed my brother a knife and demanded that he use it on me. He stared at me and laughed.

It was at that moment I realized I had no choice but to survive and no one was going to help me. I had to choose my own path. I had to learn to love myself. I had to turn the negatives in my life into positives.

Autistic, dyslexic, and carrying a big secret, I made my way in the world with a single dream.