Elis de Guerre

I have not been single during this time of year since 2005, my senior year of high school, and now, as a 27-year-old woman, I look into the next month or so of global celebration and see...nothing.

I disowned my father when I was 17. He was a perfect storm of a human being, drowning women in physical abuse, rape, judgment, and his excuses. I experienced all but rape, and for that I consider myself lucky.

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

It took me a long time to understand consent. I knew that forcing sex on someone was rape. I knew that one in five women would be raped in their lifetime. I knew that the majority of rape victims knew their attacker. But beyond that, my understanding got cloudy.

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.

There's a hot non-bromance brewing between new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci and Trump's Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus.

I went to my first therapist when I was a teenager. My family was dysfunctional to the point of being non-functional. If a decision needed to be made about custody arrangements, my parents were incapable of making it without me. Instead, I was the mediator (and had been since I was a young child), speaking first to my father on the phone and then relaying the message to my mother.

What I objected to was the genderization of feminism, the idea that women's rights have to be specifically prioritized. If the overall end goal is equality, why bring gender into the equation?

The first step isn’t to admit I have a problem. I don’t.

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.