Anonymous

My fiancé proposed with a cubic zirconia or, as some people might say, ‘a fake diamond’. I said yes and let him slide the $500, 2.5 carat extravaganza on my hand.

I don't recall meeting my first love. It seems he was always with me.

This article first appeared on Mamamia and has been republished with perm

Anorexia is not what you think. Warning: Triggering pictures included.

Over those five years, I volunteered on hot summer days and rainy mornings. I stood in snow, wearing warm layers and fleece mittens. I volunteered beside women and men, many of them young, like me, but some older and wiser and living out a lifetime of experience on those sidewalks.

... the last thing I want to do is open my legs for a man to penetrate me. Or to pleasure a man with any part of my body. Even if that man is my loving fiancé, who does listen, who does understand (as best he can), who does respect me through this ongoing turmoil. It is all too symbolic of the lifetime I have already experienced of being fucked and then told to smile and politely ask for more.

It’s real sticky-wicked to have your body become unpredictable and tortuously painful. So here I am. Homeless. Meditation is my medication.

Yelling. Throwing things. Name-calling. The only thing that holds me back from calling my teenager’s behavior abuse is that they are my child.

All of the men I met were married, and wanted to stay married. They said they loved their wives, and most said they were happy; yet the sex at home had diminished and they were men after all and needed their desire fulfilled. Besides the eye-rolling common excuse for infidelity, I believed they were telling the truth about loving their wives.

I had grown to learn that fighting=love. I was dead wrong.