Elis de Guerre

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.

I never wanted children. When other little girls were playing with dolls, I played with stuffed animals. Even when I played house, my home was filled with plush puppies.

Many people are aware of bipolar disorder. Most know it’s a mental illness that swings the brain between depression and mania. Most understand depression to be debilitating, a condition that combines sadness, despair, exhaustion, and lack of motivation. But most people don’t understand mania (which is experienced primarily by people with bipolar I) or hypomania (which those with bipolar II tend to encounter more than full-blown mania) — at least not fully.

I went to my first therapist when I was a teenager. My family was dysfunctional to the point of being non-functional. If a decision needed to be made about custody arrangements, my parents were incapable of making it without me. Instead, I was the mediator (and had been since I was a young child), speaking first to my father on the phone and then relaying the message to my mother.

Two months ago, I filed for disability for unmedicated bipolar disorder. I had spent weeks dangling from tiring hands over a spiky precipice – or so it seemed. There were days of crying at my desk, days of inexplicable panic attacks in the face of a normal workload.

I am nine months into marriage and already have regrets. I do not regret my choice of partner, or our choice to get married, but do regret who I was prior to marriage and what I did (or didn’t do) when I was single.

[CN: suicidality, hospitalization, rape culture, slut-shaming.] We all needed a place to recover, a place where our problems could be addressed and dealt with, a place where we could feel safe. However, the way the women in the ward were treated couldn’t possibly have made us feel safe or comfortable.

I have slept with seven men: five bona fide boyfriends, one guy I was seeing for a time, and one one-night stand. According to Slate’s sex history calculator, which is based on data in the General Social Survey from 2006-2014, I have slept with more people than 53% of my female peers, which I think gives me an edge comparing the sexual performances of men.

[CN: suicidal thoughts, self-harm] Why is it OK to minimize the symptoms of a serious, debilitating, chronic condition with no cure just because it’s mental, not physical?

I am 27 years old, 10 months into my marriage, and have been separated from my husband for two weeks. Consider this a letter from the trenches of impending divorce.