Elis de Guerre

Raise your hand if you feel like you want to make new friends as an adult, but have no idea how anymore. Oh, good. It’s not just me.

I’m a person who needs to know the facts. I bring a notebook with me to every doctor’s appointment. I record important meetings. The research list for my memoir is pages long. Why should pregnancy be any different? And so the research began.

What I objected to was the genderization of feminism, the idea that women's rights have to be specifically prioritized. If the overall end goal is equality, why bring gender into the equation?

Learning is the best thing for us, and the best place to look? The sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books.

I live with bipolar II disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, ADHD, and complex PTSD. I take Effexor, Klonopin, Depakote, and Adderall. I knew I needed to talk to my psychiatrist about what changes I’d need to make before we could try to have a baby. The chances that none of these medications would affect a growing fetus was impossible in my mind. But I never expected what Dr. G told me.

I walked away from two long-term relationships (and two picked-out-but-not-purchased engagement rings) because of my resolve that I would only marry once. Then I met my future husband John* in the course of my internship at his publishing company...

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.

[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 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.

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.