Elis de Guerre

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

You look fat in that outfit.

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 disowned my father when I was 17. He was a perfect storm of a human being, drowning women in physical abuse, rape, judgment, and his excuses. I experienced all but rape, and for that I consider myself lucky.

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

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.

While my estranged husband called me a “strong female lead,” and I occasionally joke about being “an independent woman who doesn't need a man,” I wish I could honestly say either of those statements felt true.

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.

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.

Undoing a marriage costs five times as much as it does to tie one up with a bow, and the paperwork is even longer. I've cried so hard I've thrown up my dinner in a municipal lot, exhausted myself with memories to the point where 7 p.m. seems like reasonable bedtime, and contemplated spending my wedding anniversary alternating between taking a pair of scissors or a lighter to my wedding dress.

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.