Anonymous

I had grown to learn that fighting=love. I was dead wrong.

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.

Moments after this big reveal, as I sat with the knowledge that I was the mother of a queer daughter, we heard about the man in Los Angeles being stopped on his way to Pride with guns and bombs, and I suddenly realized that my daughter was now one of the millions of people at risk because of vile and unreasonable hatred about non-straight sexuality.

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.

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.

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

This article originally appeared on Mamamia

All of the men I met were married, and wanted to stay married. They said they loved their wives, and most said they were happy; yet the sex at home had diminished and they were men after all and needed their desire fulfilled. Besides the eye-rolling common excuse for infidelity, I believed they were telling the truth about loving their wives.

I start each day by drawing two cards for guidance, and then further consulting the deck. Last fall, tarot cards saved my life.

I thought I knew everything I needed to know about personal style and fashion until I started teaching elementary school. I had more fashion lessons this year than a makeover-show contestant, courtesy of 6-year-old girls.