Elis de Guerre

Over the course of 12 years, I’ve had relationships with eight men: lived with three, planned for marriage three times, and followed through with marriage once. But it has only been within the past six months that I have started dating with intention.

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.

After the breathless panting of my previous panic attack had converted over time to lust, I found myself with my new love having sex in the shower. Bent over the rim of the claw-foot bathtub, I felt the past being replaced with the new joys of the present.

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

I wanted to keep people at a distance. I wanted sympathy and validation. I believed that I was inherently unworthy. However, lately, I’ve begun to change my mind — or rather, it’s started to change on its own.

Let the #LGBTBabes party rage on, my fellow rainbow darlings. You're beautiful. You're supported. You're loved. And you're perfect just as you are.

Why is it when we meet women that we find inspirational, capable, talented, and intelligent, we often find them intimidating instead of wanting to court and friend-date them?

Everyone has their inner critic, the voice in your head that whispers all manner of terrible things:

You look fat in that outfit.

The Kinsey Scale test labeled me a 2, or, "predominately heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual," one notch above "equally heterosexual and homosexual."

For six months I was a heavy user, a big spender, the girl who let her boyfriend snort lines off her ass and tits. For six months, I fell into cocaine culture, and then, just as suddenly, I fell back out.