Anonymous

That’s part of the problem, I think. I keep waiting for my sexual partners to figure out how to bring me to orgasm.

... the last thing I want to do is open my legs for a man to penetrate me. Or to pleasure a man with any part of my body. Even if that man is my loving fiancé, who does listen, who does understand (as best he can), who does respect me through this ongoing turmoil. It is all too symbolic of the lifetime I have already experienced of being fucked and then told to smile and politely ask for more.

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.

This support my gender-fluid child receives at school means so much to my family, but the ripple effects of what the children will learn will go far.

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.

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.

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

I’ll be the first to admit that a large part of my twenties was spent in a euphoric haze brought on by fairly regular pot smoking. I loved the stuff — and it certainly loved me. I don't feel I ever had a “problem” with it, but I did feel a strong pull to have it in my life.

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

This article originally appeared on Mamamia