Anonymous

If you go, I’ll have to pick up all the dog poop. I will have to take out the trash. I will have to sleep alone.

Over those five years, I volunteered on hot summer days and rainy mornings. I stood in snow, wearing warm layers and fleece mittens. I volunteered beside women and men, many of them young, like me, but some older and wiser and living out a lifetime of experience on those sidewalks.

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.

Despite our fear of getting caught, the richness of experience, the beauty of the land, and the generosity of the Cuban people made the risk more than worthwhile.

Our first IUI happened, and I can describe it as “OH ALL THE SWEARING THIS HURTS SO MUCH WHY IS THIS TERRIBLE THING HAPPENING.” It turns out that I have a scarred cervix, which requires that it be manually opened in order to put in the catheter.

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.

Anorexia is not what you think. Warning: Triggering pictures included.

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

I was married to my own child for 21 years. I thought I was marrying my high school sweetheart, but I was actually becoming my husband's mother.

I don't recall meeting my first love. It seems he was always with me.