Elis de Guerre

I have slept with seven men: five bona fide boyfriends, one guy I was seeing for a time, and one one-night stand. According to Slate’s sex history calculator, which is based on data in the General Social Survey from 2006-2014, I have slept with more people than 53% of my female peers, which I think gives me an edge comparing the sexual performances of men.

It’s a strange day to be writing about how my mental illnesses have made my life better.

The Kinsey Scale test labeled me a 2, or, "predominately heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual," one notch above "equally heterosexual and homosexual."

Over the course of 12 years, I’ve had relationships with eight men: lived with three, planned for marriage three times, and followed through with marriage once. But it has only been within the past six months that I have started dating with intention.

I never wanted children. When other little girls were playing with dolls, I played with stuffed animals. Even when I played house, my home was filled with plush puppies.

Undoing a marriage costs five times as much as it does to tie one up with a bow, and the paperwork is even longer. I've cried so hard I've thrown up my dinner in a municipal lot, exhausted myself with memories to the point where 7 p.m. seems like reasonable bedtime, and contemplated spending my wedding anniversary alternating between taking a pair of scissors or a lighter to my wedding dress.

Learning is the best thing for us, and the best place to look? The sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books.

While my estranged husband called me a “strong female lead,” and I occasionally joke about being “an independent woman who doesn't need a man,” I wish I could honestly say either of those statements felt true.

I am 27 years old, 10 months into my marriage, and have been separated from my husband for two weeks. Consider this a letter from the trenches of impending divorce.

t interests me that I can immediately think of the gifts of anxiety, panic, and even my spurts of agoraphobia. Being tense in body and mind, living with fear that feels real even though I know intellectually it isn’t, experiencing the migraines, chest pains and choking sensations — these aren’t things that lend themselves to my happiness.
Yet the compulsion to stay at home, brought on by edginess and unease outside, keeps me productive. Anxiety makes me communicative, even if just through electronic means. The worry about judgment pushes me to write better, to edit more thoroughly, to answer the voice in my head saying “You’re not good enough” with a defiant “Then watch me improve.”