Anonymous

"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?"

I spent seventeen years in an abusive relationship. Not only do I the physical scars to prove it, I carefully tote a heavy heap of emotional scars. Humiliation, fear, and shame were poured into my heart for years, by a person that claimed to love me - my mother.

Unlike before, pleasuring myself isn’t a daily or weekly thing. But I'm also not ashamed anymore. As an adult woman, I have granted myself full permission.

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?

It never felt like sexual assault, him taking the sex I didn’t offer. It felt more like a silent agreement. I surrendered to sex; he didn’t complain.

A fresh perspective from a straight, cisgender man on what it's like dating a trans woman...

Sexuality is fluid. And mine has led me from girl-on-girl action to a man inside me.

This article originally appeared on Mamamia

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

Yelling. Throwing things. Name-calling. The only thing that holds me back from calling my teenager’s behavior abuse is that they are my child.