Photo by @martinschoeller Martin: “You look so young, how old are you?” Eva: “I’m eighteen.” M: "How long have you been out ...

Photo by @martinschoeller
Martin: “You look so young, how old are you?”
Eva: “I’m eighteen.”
M: "How long have you been out on the streets?"
E: "Since July but I was homeless before when I was younger because my grandfather had died and I was homeless with my twin brother and my mom and then I got into the foster system."
M: "How long were you homeless with your mom?"
E: "Maybe from the age of three or four to six."
M: "And then?"
E: "I was at school and she had beaten me pretty bad, like really bad, and I had bruises all up and down my back. And I told the teacher what was going on, like the teacher was talking to me and eventually it just came out. And I told the teacher and the principal was called up and then the police came and took us when school let out."
M: "Where is your mom now?"
E: "She’s homeless in Torrence."
M: "And the foster care, what kind of experience was that?"
E: "Hard, really hard. I was put on psychotropic medications at a very young age, around six or seven."
M: "Is that for ADD?"
E: "Yeah, pretty much. They diagnosed me with ADD, ADHD, anger issues. But I was six and... me and my twin brother always fought. It was like my mom never really disciplined us and put her foot down, like okay you shouldn’t do that. So hitting people was okay when I was younger. I had one psychiatrist who put me on so much medication, like, I had to go to UCLA and get detox. In foster care, nobody really disciplined you or showed you the right way to handle things. You kinda had to learn on your own what was right and what was wrong. And nobody is really there to support you. Stability is a thing I never had."
M: "Where is your twin brother?"
E: "He lives in Lancaster now."
M: "You guys weren’t in foster care together?"
E: "No, they split us [up]."
M: "Oh god, really?"
E: “Mhm." M: "That’s terrible. How can you split up twins?"
E: "It was hard." .
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