EVE

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

EVE

“Get Out”

The stigma around domestic abuse is that you have to come from a bad home to have it happen, that you may be in a specific age range, probably in a marriage and are in some sort of long term commitment...but that isn’t my story. In fact, I come from a very happy and loving home, with supportive siblings and parents. Up until I was fifteen I had what many would see as the perfect life, but as a freshman in high school I was sexually assaulted by someone I had known since I was young. It took me a year to come to terms with what had happened; that this was rape and that it wasn’t ok. This trauma caused me to see myself in a completely different light, where I had little to no self-worth. Soon after I was sexually abused, I started a relationship with a boy who I thought would build my self-confidence up again.

The relationship started out amazing and it felt like things were starting to work out for me again, but it didn’t stay that way. At first he would find little things to be mad at me for and yell at me, that led into him finding things about me that he didn’t like. He called me fat, and other degrading names so many times that I started to believe those things about myself. I did everything I could to fix the things about me he didn’t like but he always found more and more things to yell at me for.

Around six months into the relationship the yelling turned into more. The assault from before weighed on me so heavily that I didn’t believe I was enough to move on and find something better. I put up with him calling me names and what I thought of as “playful hitting” at the time. I had enough and due to infidelity, I knew it was time to leave the relationship behind. After we broke up, the abuse didn’t stop. He would call me in front of people to make me seem crazy, tell everyone how awful I was, and constantly comment on my weight. He drove me into such a dark place that my mom had to take me to the hospital for help. To be frank, at the age of 15, I just wanted to end it all.

On April 28th, 2018 I was starting to feel better and met up with my friend group in a parking lot so we could drive together to a party. When I got to where we were meeting, the boy was there and had already been drinking. He convinced me to take him with us to the party and it just so happened I was the one driving that night. When we got to the party he was clearly drunk but kept drinking to the point of being sick and he needed someone to take him home. He had to be carried to my car because he was too drunk to even walk on his own.

The drive to his house felt like the calm before the storm. He seemed like he was asleep and for the first time in months, I felt at peace with him and the fact that not everything that came out of his mouth was insulting me in some way. When we got to his house I woke him up and told him to go inside. He wouldn’t get out of the car. I got so frustrated that I got out of the car and walked towards the front door to get his mom. He followed me out of the car and pulled me back into the car by my hair. I saw it in his eyes right before he lunged at me. With one hand around my neck and two fingers in my mouth holding my tongue down and scratching the inside of my mouth. His other hand was holding me back and giving me no way out, kicking me as well and even applying so much force I got a black eye. At that moment I really thought he was going to kill me but then a phone call came over the bluetooth of my car. My mom was calling and I used my knee to hit the answer button on my steering wheel. He finally let go and my mom could tell something was wrong. She heard him screaming in the background and all I could do was cry. You could hear the panic in her voice when she realized I was in trouble, but he hung up the phone.

I was so terrified of him, I felt I had no other choice but to listen. He wanted me to drive him to pick up his car. When I got to the parking lot where his car was, he got out and a group of people were there, the same people who would later call me a liar. I was hysterical and when they asked what happened I yelled, “hurt me!” and drove away.

When I got to the entrance of my neighborhood my mom was pulling out to come find me. I just wanted to be home and be safe. When I got back, my 18 year old brother was there and crying. The hardest part of that night was watching him cry with anger that someone could do this to me, and seeing my mom seem helpless about what had happened. My mom took pictures of the marks all over me, the black eye, the bruises, all of it. It was very visible I had been hurt. That whole night I thought I was suffocating, the cuts on my mouth made it swell up to the point it was hard to breathe. For the next few days I couldn’t eat because my mouth hurt so much and my jaw was so swollen from the pressure he put on me.

The following school week, everyone knew about what happened but I pushed through and went anyway. Even with physical evidence of what happened, everyone I had known turned against me and told me that I was a liar and that no high school boy had it in them to beat their girlfriend. Regardless of the photos and marks on my body, he was given no consequences for his actions. We quickly decided that for my mental health, I couldn’t be in this situation anymore and within two weeks I was living in St.Louis focusing on my life as a professional equestrian.

When I moved to St.Louis I was still shy and scared to let people in, especially men, but when I did, I found a group of people who now support me through everything. Almost a year to the day of my attack, I started dating a new boy who showed me what a real relationship is; that I wasn’t broken and was still lovable. In December, 2019 I was diagnosed with PTSD. This is the first time I have ever told the full story of the things I went through and how they changed not only my life, but the life of my loved ones. The day I realized that I am beautiful and worthy and the things that happened won’t define me but ultimately make me stronger, was the day I started to really live again. In time I started to realize that I’m not alone & I shouldn’t be embarrassed by what happened to me. I knew it was important to speak up and let people know that young people go through things like this as well, and it shapes the people they become. No one should go through this alone.

If I had a chance to talk to someone who is going through this same thing, I would tell them that no matter how scary it is, get out of the situation. It will always be a part of you and how you see relationships, but it is not what defines you. Every day I do struggle with what happened to me, but without it I wouldn’t be who I am today; a person I am really proud of. Yes, at the age of 18, I am a sexual assault and domestic abuse survivor but I am so much more than that.