Since the national Ad for Passions this week declares
 

  “ It’s All About Eve”…

I wanted to recount Eve’s history and background, and why she finds herself in her current situation.

Eve Russell grew up as a member of the Black Upper Class. Her parents were unaffectionate snobs. The only affection she received was from the grandmother for whom she is named, but her grandmother died when she was young, and that was the last love she knew as a child. She was an ornament to her parents, who trotted her out when it was useful to them.

The tea parties, the debutante balls, all of what she told her daughters about her childhood IS true. The only lie, outside of her time that she spent with Julian Crane, that Eve has told, is that her parents are dead. Maybe they are after all these years, but I doubt it. I have a feeling that Whitney and Simone have read about their grandparents in magazines like Jet, Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise, and not even known it.

Eve was the proper young woman. Repressed, and straight-and-narrow. She did everything her parents expected of her, and wound up at the college of her parents choice: Radcliffe College.

Her parents had even begun to introduce Eve to the ‘right’ kind of young men: well-educated, well-bred fellow upper-crusters who they expected her to marry. Eve saw her future with one of those guys, and it made her ill.

What did Eve want to do? What was in her soul?

She wanted to sing. It was the music that made her come alive. When she slipped into the club and went onstage, she felt alive. She felt her passion. She was being the person she shut off in order to fit into her parent’s world.

And, who did she meet?

Julian. She wasn’t her parent’s daughter with him. She was herself. Good and bad, wild, free with Julian. She could be the person she wanted to be with him. Yes, she was naïve, and after being ‘starved’ all her life, she indulged in things she shouldn’t have with Julian, but those were the times. Like so many, she went too far.

Eve tried explaining to TC during Sheridan and Luis’ engagement party as to how a young woman could fall for Julian:

" She was young. Naïve. Had never felt loved in her life. Julian told her that she was beautiful. That he would make all her dreams come true. She was desperate and lonely enough that she wanted to believe him. Maybe she could have even fallen in love with him, and given herself to him because of that love. Only to realize later that it was a mistake…..one that would haunt her for the rest of her life."
 
 
 

That was how she saw it. Remember, she spent the past 20 years with her armor against Julian, filled with hate. She didn’t believe Julian loved either her or her son. She believed she gave her heart to a man who didn’t care at all, and abandoned her without regret. That is the lens through which she told that story to TC.

NOW, Eve knows that Julian loved both her and their son. That she didn’t give her heart to a man who was using her. But, it was after she made crucial decisions that shaped the last 20+ years of her life.

When Eve found herself in the hospital, on Christmas, with doctor’s telling her that her baby had ‘died’, it was the end for her. The repressed young woman had taken a chance. She had taken a chance that there was a ‘life’ for her full of love, passion, music, vitality and freedom. She had taken a chance and lost. Lost it all: her love, the music, her relationship, her parents, and finally, the child. The child that meant so much to her – the chance to love someone and be loved in return. The proof that it wasn’t all bad with Julian, because if they could create something so beautiful as a child, it wasn’t all ugly.

Eve learned a lesson because of that experience, and I think it was:
Being myself, I don’t deserve love. So, I’ll become whoever it is that people can love.

Which leads us to TC and Eve. Eve has been playing a role. The role necessary to get love. She doesn’t think that being ‘imperfect’ will do it. After all, the people who are supposed to support you no matter what – your parents – walked out on Eve. Eve had cleaned up her addiction by the time she spoke to her parents about the baby. She was clean and sober, and working on a way to go back to school to get an education to support herself and the baby. But, it wasn’t enough for her parents, who turned their backs on their daughter because she had the nerve to want to raise her own child. If your parents won’t love you because you make ‘mistakes’, then the solution of course, is to never make any.

I know this isn’t realistic, and very emotionally unhealthy, but this is the choice that Eve made. It was the choice she saw for survival. She never dealt with the pain of everything that happened to her. She delved into her medical studies and pretended that it never happened. It was her own private pain, and  THIS is the reason for ‘understanding’ TC. She recognized the same thing in him, and respected it.

One of the best passages in Hidden Passions  is when TC and Eve were talking about pain and how it can haunt you.
 

" So do you know what I’m saying, Eve?" he whispered.
 
" I know exactly what you’re saying. There are some things we just don’t get over. Ever."

" That’s right."

" Some pain we just learn to live with. Like a piece of furniture in the room – the ugliest chair you ever saw. And you didn’t bring it into your pretty room. It just got dropped there. And you want to move it, but it’s bolted to the floor forever – and that’s that. You can maybe drape something over it. Decide not to look in its direction for years at a time. But it will always be there. In a house you can never leave until you die."
 

Eve understands TC’s pain. She understands that he has demons. BUT, he loves her, protects her, and has given her the family she always wanted. In return, she had to ‘play a role’, but for a long time, Eve’s thought it was worth it. That it was the only choice she had.

Now, slowly, the layers back to Eve’s inner core are being exposed, and it scares her. She’s FEELING again. Someone she thought she had buried is popping up, from time to time. She had that shared vision with Julian, where she saw a woman who was happy, fulfilled, living a dream, and was successful. A woman who didn’t live her life wrapped in lies. I don’t doubt that Eve loves TC, because she knows TC, faults and all, and loves him. TC doesn’t even know Eve, and Eve is afraid that when her faults are exposed, the time she put in as  the ‘perfect wife’, will mean nothing.

The thing Eve fears most is being alone. The loneliness of her childhood, combined with how she felt once her son ‘died’. She was dead, emotionally, for years, until she met TC. She’s scared of losing their love. She’s lost a child and her ‘parents’ – people that were supposed to love her unconditionally. Which is exactly why she’s done the awful things she’s done, and gives into Ivy’s blackmail. Eve doesn’t believe anyone but ‘perfect’ Eve will get love. And, that’s why I’m looking forward to her being exposed. I want an Eve who realizes that she DOES deserve love – with a man who accepts ALL of her. As an Eve fan, it’s what I want most.