Anonymous

The sad thing is, it took someone almost destroying me to make me open my eyes to the extent of what happens when we talk not about a culture of consent, but about temptation and defense instead.

There really isn't anything unusual about our union. For all intents and purposes it's actually a pretty typical marriage. Except we're in an open marriage.

My dad had an explosive anger that he took out on his children. My father abused me and I love him in spite of myself. I don’t want him to die.

I never imagined myself being anyone’s wife so I grieved for my single life when I got married. I began to secretly long for the life I’d left behind.

"The biggest boy assured me they would be. But the ball play got even more intense. Were they aiming the ball at my kids or was it just my imagination?"

What's more dangerous — meeting people on the Internet or meeting people in real life?

I remained silent, after I was sexually harassed at work. I was terrified if I spoke up I would lose my job for making a mountain out of a molehill.

For more than 20 years, I believed I was a slut. A shameful, vile, one-time slut, but a slut all the same. It was you, Mr White Canterbury shorts, that led me to believe this. But, since reading the letter from Brock Turner’s victim, I realized, what you did, Mr White Canterbury Shorts, was in fact rape.

When I left the hospital the night that he was admitted, I sat in the parking lot gasping with big ugly sobs and looking for someone to blame — beginning with myself. I'm his mother, and I'm the only consistent parent he's ever had. As I finally made my way home, with tears streaming down my face and my mouth open in a silent scream of pain, all I could ask myself was "what have I done?" How could I have allowed my son to be hurt so deeply, and in so many ways?

I often think about the people in my hometown whose lives were ruined because they live in the “wrong” state. That same stigma causes me to feel horrible after I smoke.