Anonymous

I remained silent, after I was sexually harassed at work. I was terrified if I spoke up I would lose my job for making a mountain out of a molehill.

In my checkered past, long before I was a member of the PTA, I sometimes worked behind the scenes in X-rated films

I sat up abruptly and to my horror saw this woman using this tiny tube of glue to affix these sparkly diamante things to my lady parts . . .

I wasn’t thankful. I was too negative. I wasn’t doing enough. When I found out my mood swings weren't my fault, that I had bipolar disorder, I cried.

Being a human is hard. Being a human with an eating disorder is inexplicably hard. Every time I think I have control over the situation, my eating disorder pulls a fast one on me and reminds me what is really in charge — food and exercise.

For more than 20 years, I believed I was a slut. A shameful, vile, one-time slut, but a slut all the same. It was you, Mr White Canterbury shorts, that led me to believe this. But, since reading the letter from Brock Turner’s victim, I realized, what you did, Mr White Canterbury Shorts, was in fact rape.

If you go, I’ll have to pick up all the dog poop. I will have to take out the trash. I will have to sleep alone.

This support my gender-fluid child receives at school means so much to my family, but the ripple effects of what the children will learn will go far.

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.

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.