Elis de Guerre

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.

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?

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.

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."

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

It took me a long time to understand consent. I knew that forcing sex on someone was rape. I knew that one in five women would be raped in their lifetime. I knew that the majority of rape victims knew their attacker. But beyond that, my understanding got cloudy.

The first step isn’t to admit I have a problem. I don’t.

[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.

In the past four months, I’ve undergone a veritable dating hurricane. I ran out on my 10-month-old marriage in August. I texted my decision and departure to my closest friends, live-tweeted my flight from upstate New York to the New Hampshire seacoast, and have written extensively and publicly about separation, my estranged husband, and the terrors of emotional pain ever since.

I am nine months into marriage and already have regrets. I do not regret my choice of partner, or our choice to get married, but do regret who I was prior to marriage and what I did (or didn’t do) when I was single.