My name is Eva Rain Jobe. I am 14 years old. And I was born to a horrible mother and a wonderful father. When I was born, it was raining outside and my dad loves the rain so he said my middle name was to be rain. I come from a family of drama and anger, yet the people I live with and call my family now are the best people you could possibly meet. I have 3 brothers and 1 sister. My daddy’s name is Jeremy Dane Jobe and my adopted moms name is Natalie Dawn Jobe. I love my parents and know to respect them even if I do get mad sometimes.

When I was born, I lived in a tiny trailer in a terrible piece of town. My mother was a drunkard and Drug addict and my father was just young and trying to be the best dad he could be at the time, working 3 jobs and never seeing me because of it. I used to go to my Grandpa and grandma’s house when Shannon was too lazy and high to be a mother. This was my life up until I was 5. Then I met Natalie. I remember the day I met her, my dad and Shannon were fighting like maniacs and my dad told Natalie to take me inside. Not knowing who she was, I got scared and started to cry. She quickly calmed me down and me and her went in my room and played Barbie’s for 2 hours and we just talked and laughed and had so much fun, I knew she would be my friend forever.

 Nat and my dad got married when I was 6 and I can’t tell you how happy I was. Even though I had to go to Shannon’s house every other week, when I did go over my dad’s house, I had a blast and my life turned happy. As I got older, my life got worse, Shannon abused us more and with different and more brutal objects leaving cuts and bruises under our cloths and threatening us more and more every time she did.

I remember when I was about 8 years old, I had just walked 2 miles home from school, and Shannon was laying on the bathroom floor with a broken wine bottle in one hand and 2 burning cigarettes in the other. After tip toeing through the house to the laundry room where she made me sleep a lot of the times, I read a kindergarten book, struggling to get the words: Of and anywhere out. Crying because I was so uneducated I laid there on the dirty roach infested floor, wishes I could just somehow, melt away, thinking and hoping that nobody would ever remember me. I had already failed 1^st grade and was convinced that I was the dumbest human in the world and that I would never be anyone. I then heard Shannon screaming and yelling, throwing glass plate after plate over nothing. She then saw me and smiled in a sinister way, saying “oh, Eva…. You have been a bad little girl haven’t you?” and she ran at me with a knife. When she reached me she was loopy and missed my head by probably 3 inches, she then got up in my face and with her nasty, wine smelling breath whispered, “I’m gonna get you one day, don’t you worry you dumb little idiot.” “Nobody loves you, nobody ever will.” I then waited until she passed out on the floor and got up, looking for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. I finally found $3.26 exactly, and I put on my too little for my feet shoes and nasty unwashed cloths and walked my little scrawny self-up to the little rusty gas station to by me a bag of chips and some water. When I was walking home, I saw my big brother walking home too and joined him and his friends,  he just took my food and pushed me into the street and said now go away, you little brat, and walked away laughing with his friends. I sat there on the curb for about 5 hours until I finally got home and found the door locked and Shannon in the kitchen with drugs in her hands and the broken wine bottle on the table, she quickly grabbed me and started ripping at my cloths and yelling cuss words at me, beating over the head with the bottle and then I passed out waking up outside with cuts on my back, bruises on my legs and neck, a headache, and cigarette burns all over my arms, and as usual ended up sleeping on the back porch, cold, alone, dirt, and hungry.

I remember when I finally told my dad and Nat about Shannon. I was 10 and I said, “I don’t want to go over there, please, don’t make me” they got scared and sked me why and I told them a lot of things she did to me. They were crying and I was crying and they now have temporary custody of me and is working on getting full custody of me. I still get scared at night, I haven’t had a good dream in almost a year. My nightmares get worse and worse every night, and there seems to be nothing I can really do about it. I will one day learn to forgive Shannon for everything that she has done to me, which will be extremely hard for me to do, but even though I might forgive her, I will never forget her and what she did to me, they horrid things she has done to not only me but many other people is unspeakable, and cannot be forgotten. I know that one day my life will go back to normal, with happy dreams and no more Shannon ever again. I just can’t wait for that day to come.