Elis de Guerre

I can feel proud of my cleavage and my combat boots. I feel fierce in drop-crotch sweatpants and preppy sweaters. I carry my edge with me and, with it, my own brand of femininity. Best of all, I consult no one but my own eyes. I don’t ask permission. I don’t seek what’s in fashion.

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.

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.

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 first went on disability when I lived in Rochester, New York.

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

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

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.

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.

Last week, my mother came home from work, found the shower faucet leaking hot water, and told me to "get my head out of my cunt, and start thinking about other things."