It seems like nowadays, there is a day devoted to everything and anything, from thanking 19th-century History Professors to an entire month of appreciating cows and their milk, to which the cafeteria develops a full months menu based purely around dairy. Hello constipation...

However, many times the spotlight is focused on the causes often shrouded in darkness and hidden in grief. As you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month (see "shrouded in darkness and hidden in grief.") Now, this is by no means intended to belittle Breast Cancer Awareness, but instead to promote greater knowledge and awareness of this silent and dark thief in the night who robs the safety and security away from so many Americans on just a daily basis alone.

We, the writers at Allegheny College, have amassed a collection of stories and personal accounts of Domestic Violence that have occurred during their lives and how it has affected their lives.

Franklin and Marshall Part 1 I University of South Florida

Sara

Sara is a survivor of Domestic Violence while growing up. Her father was an abusive alcoholic who hurt his family verbally, financially and sometimes physically. She was kind enough to sit down with us and share her story of what it was like growing up in an environment of Domestic Violence and Abuse.

So, my dad was an alcoholic my entire life and I was mentally abused by him; I'm pretty sure my brother was physically abused by him before I was born and into my time as a Second-grader. And my mom was mentally abused severely, and I don't know anything about physical abuse. He would do things to her to cause physical abuse.

Odyssey: I also have been in a domestically abusive relationship, and people automatically jump to the conclusion that you were hit or sexually abused or assaulted in some sort of way.. Is that true for you?

Yeah, I was never hit. There was only one time that I ever thought I was going to be hit in the face and that was because I was protecting my mom and rising to the situation. I was also fiscally abused by my father growing up, especially since he was the primary bread-winner for our family.He would withhold money from my mother and me if I/we didn't meet certain expectations of his. Early on, there was this conditioning my father implemented to have me fit a certain physical stereotype for my body and self image. My father was never comfortable with the fact that my friends were real thin and I wasn't. And you need to recognize that my friends and I all had very different and unique body types that exist in the world. He would compare me to them always. And it really was like living under a microscope: my butt was too big, my stomach was too big, and it was always something. Also, I was an athlete in high school and muscular so I was naturally going to be bigger and it wasn't something that I could really control. I also have this OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]-thing too... I have scars pretty much every where that aren't from cutting, but from picking and stuff which comes from anxiety that my dad caused me because I was fearing him coming home and being drunk and fighting and things escalated all the time in my house. He would constantly ride me and question me about the scaring everywhere. So I was self-conscious about that and I have gotten to the point now that I don't wear shorts anymore: strictly because I don't feel comfortable in them anymore.

Odyssey: I want to tie this back, as you commented earlier, about your father wanting you to fit a certain body type. And I know the media has portrayed this image of what women and men "should" look like. Do you think that this sort of relationship that you have with your father was an innate belief of what you should look like, or instead a socially conditioned idea and definition that he wanted you to attain? Can you think of what his feelings may have been?

My dad wasn't really engulfed in media culture at all. he's the outdoors type of "Duck Dynasty," without all the glitz and cameras...

Odyssey: Does he have the beard too?

I have never seen my dad without a beard, ever.

Odyssey: Wow.

The last time I saw him, he was growing it back my senior year of high school. He had it all the way until he was 60 when he died. Even while he was going through Chemo and Radiation Therapy, he still had his beard. He had a heavy involvement in biker culture. So you know those sexy biker chicks who got to rallies and races? I think that was what his image of the female body should be. Like, when my mom was younger, she looked exactly like that image of a biker bitch I guess. I wasn't like that. He even stressed her out a lot, even after she had kids. And the body issue didn't stop there. I used to hide my candy wrappers behind the TV stand so my dad wouldn't find them. I mean, can you imagine how silly and pathetic it is for a kid to have to hide a couple of candy wrappers because you think and know that your dad might find out and make you cry? It was absolutely terrible. I was super uncomfortable and I really hated my body growing up.

Odyssey: You talked about your brother earlier as well. Would you mind sharing a little about him and his relationship with you and your father?

My brother and my father have always had a very explosive relationship. Yeah, my brother is about eight years older than me and he has always been my mother's and my protector while I was growing up. He moved out of the house at 16 to go live with one of his friends and then when he graduated he served his tour in the Army Airborne for five years. So my brother and my dad did not have a good relationship, remotely at all and it was very explosive 100 percent of the time. But back when he lived at home, he and my dad would get into yelling and shouting matches at the dinner table at opposite sides from one another, which I suppose was a really good thing as they couldn't reach one another. Also, I think that as my brother got older, my dad got more and more concerned about him as having the physical strength to fight back against him. So he would keep distance from him and instead target my mother and me.

Odyssey: Do you still love your dad?

Um, you know, I do. Let me clarify though; I love my father, but I do not like him. He may have been abusive and awful and mean, but I am his daughter and I love him and he did what he could. He was a product of alcoholic and abusive parents who were significantly worse than he.

Odyssey: Thank you so much for sharing with us, Sara. We really appreciate this opportunity.

Absolutely! Thank you for sharing my story with others who may need it.

Sarah Eidbo

This is from Sarah Eidbo, a current student at Allegheny College and her experience with Domestic Abuse and Rape when she was growing up and still in middle school.

I’m still struggling with coming to terms as a victim of domestic violence. I wasn’t in some back alley in the middle of the night and was attacked. I didn't think this qualified for me. I didn’t realize something had happened to me until I had heard another individual share his story and I realized our stories lined up so well and I had to come to terms that something happened to me. After going to the Alpha Chi Omega candlelight vigil my sophomore year, I finally broke down crying while with some friends in the campus center and not knowing what to classify my occurrence as. It's not always a black and white issue and is just so gray and hard to classify.

I should give some background to this story; how do I put this... what happened to me that I didn’t realize until later. When I had turned 13, I had a boyfriend that I had been dating for going on several months now. One day he said something along the lines that we should have sex. I was 13 and I didn’t realize what that truly meant and implied. I merely thought it was the next logical step. I agreed to it and said sure. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because I didn’t know.

And then we had sex. And two minutes in, I realized I didn't want to do this. I had no clue what I was doing and I was so misinformed. I didn’t realize you had to spread your legs to have sex so he pried them open for me and after he entered me, I realized that it wasn’t right at all and that I was hurting. I said to him "no" several times and to please stop, but maybe I didn’t say it loud enough. I’ve always been a quite person. And this part of the story is where I realized that my story lined up with Spencer's [Allegheny College Alumnus and Domestic Violence Awareness Advocate] to where I was watching the trees and disconnecting myself from the moment. I came to, and he was still having sex with me. I had already given my consent and I figured that once you had given consent, it was all fair game from there.

Thank god he was only 14 and he didn't last very long. I remember coming to when he had finished and I had no idea what to do and that you weren’t supposed to finish inside someone and also that we didn’t have protection. We didn’t know that we needed it.

It didn’t feel like ten minutes... it felt like an eternity. I realized that this was really really bad and that I could get pregnant. Neither of us knew how to deal with the situation so I went to my mom and told her what happened. She was pretty upset and got me Plan B and I was on Plan B as a 13-year-old girl who was now a sexually active human being.

I could classify the first time I had sex as rape and to this day I am still hesitant to classify what happened to me as a rape as I still don't know and I am rather unsure still.

It happened again with the same guy and I have no recollection of it at all. I think I purposefully blocked that from my memory. I had to go to my mother again for Plan B and it was really stressful and scary. How does a thirteen year old come up with $50 dollars like that?

I didn’t tell my best friend or anyone, aside from my mom and she doesn’t know the full story, for five years after what happened to me, because i considered myself a slut who had consented to this activity and thought that I couldn’t take that consent back. And being so young, I felt I was already tainted and that people would look at me as damaged goods and as a person who had sex while still in middle school.

It took me along time to put together why I had so many past issues. and I think I can tie it back to those events as the root for a lot of my self-image troubles. After these events, he made me feel as if there was no one else for me and that I wasn’t good enough. I was just hitting puberty and I have big hips... I didn’t know what a thigh gap was... I've always been rather thin. He told me he had stretched me out and had caused my thigh gap, as opposed to natural bone structure. He would give me dirty looks when I ate anything and so I stopped eating. I dropped twenty pounds in a month, which being as thin as I am naturally, that was an entire fifth of my body mass at the time, so I was dangerously thin at the time.

I didn’t break up with him until I found out about all the other girls he had been talking to. But by that time, all the damage had been done and it caused me to struggle with eating for years to come. I had a string of bad relationships after that and always felt that I needed to have a relationship to be stable and secure. I didn't think that I was worth very much and I had a recurring theme of nightmares that I still have today, where the dream is whatever boyfriend I currently have or have had in the past, tuns into the first one and does this awful damage to me in my mind and my dreams.

This entire ordeal has confused the hell out me for years and even now. I still don't get what happened to me. I never hated him really. I mean, did when we broke up and I found out about his other girls and who he'd been screwing, but never hated him. I always have put him in the best light and I always refrain from using his real name. Some part of me makes me feel like it wasn't his fault and that there was some part of me that let him. I never had to forgive him. Maybe I should have said "No" louder.

Domestic Violence and Abuse has so many names and faces and incarnations. It doesn't just happen to the bad people or the good people: it happens to people and it can destroy lives. The women and men who live through and have been victimized by Domestic Violence are numerous and many unknown.But this does not mean that they will go unnoticed. They will be heard. They must be heard, because if they aren't, who is going to stand up and shout to the world that this, Domestic Violence and Abuse is wrong? I challenge you all to share this information with as many people as you know and help us to end Domestic Violence and promote healthy and strong relationships because love shouldn't hurt.

This is a joint article written by Louis J. Feher-Peiker and Gavi Winer.