woman—I smile, I laugh, I love. Love is a funny thing. It has a way of making you feel like you're on cloud nine and embraces you into a warm, comforting hug. It makes you take in every second of this beautiful life and wish you could live in the moment forever, with whoever or whatever you're sharing that moment with. But...love can be complicated. It can make you put your trust into the wrong people. It can be manipulated and make you feel ashamed, guilty, and anxious. It can make you hate...

why I get so offended. Am I being too sensitive? I feel like people will never take me seriously. I feel like I constantly have to prove everyone wrong and sway people to think that I am qualified. Today someone said “How can she be fit for the job? She is so shy.” Another said “You’re so quiet”. All day I kept thinking about these two comments and couldn’t seem to understand why they hurt my feelings. It's not like what they said isn't true and it's also not offensive. They weren't bullying...

nineteen, the first boy I ever truly loved made me feel so safe, and so whole, and so loved. Sometimes he would make deprecating comments about me, or my appearance, or my brain, but it would always be brushed off as a joke — something to laugh at, something he of course didn't mean because he loved me. He showed me that so much, so often, in so many other ways. His older friends became my friends, and as we all spent more time together, I couldn't help feeling like I was the...

abuse and assault. I have survived depression and anxiety. I have survived toxic relationships. I have loved and lost and loved again. I have survived the death of many people close to me. I have survived the 10-hour car ride to get here. I want to show people that it’s okay to talk about difficult subjects. I want to show others that they can fight too. I want to show people that personal progress is not a straight line. I have survived my physically and mentally abusive father...

I was nineteen. My best friend and I drove to a nearby city for a concert because we had a car and the means. He was in one of the bands and he noticed me. That’s every girl’s dream, right? A boy in a band who has a handful of groupies and yet, he notices you. But he was a man with a lot of pent up everything – an addictive personality, and not a single clue of what the word “no” meant. Sometimes I think I wasn’t vocal enough, that I let him live in a lie...

18th birthday. In my country, that’s our legal drinking age. I went out with a group of friends. Anyone who knows me will tell you I make friends easily, mainly male friends. One of the people I went out with that night was a male friend. We met at uni, and I said he could share my bed with me that night because two of my other friends had taken up the spare bedroom. For me and my friends, female or male, sharing a bed is platonic, normal...

talks about what it's like to have an out of body experience. It's a very surreal and unnerving feeling. Only in therapy did I learn it's a way to cope with an immense amount of trauma. But because no one discussed mental illness around me, I was lost in a world with no doors. I just figured not wanting to get out of bed was my new normal. That even though I smiled when I didn't want to was something people just expected of me...

of abuse and domestic violence. For the first time ever, I'm the one telling it. When I was a teenager, I graduated from high school early. I got a job, saved up my money, and tried to think of what I was going to do for the rest of my life. What I wanted for myself wasn't practical to those around me. I'm a lesbian who grew up in a very religious household, in an extremely broken home. Growing up, I had a lot of issues with self-worth and body image. I was told by my family that...

one to have a temper, but now it is my white flag; it is my wolf howl. I am proud to be angry about what manages to phase me. I don't make promises, but I promised my twenty-three-year-old self that, of all the things I force backwards down my throat, anger will no longer be one of them. But I will be frugal with my temper like my dad was with his cash. I know the difference between waiting in traffic and feeling like your arms that have held babies, your legs that...

in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). More specifically, I have both a bachelors and a masters in physics. Physics is roughly only 20% women nationally, so I'm used to being the only female in a room. Many of the men studying physics today don't see a problem with me being female; however, there is a portion of them that I have to constantly fight — mostly for them to believe that, yes, I do know what I'm talking about....

upset. / The brain is buzzing. / The anxiety is building. / So are the tears. / So are all of my feelings, / All of my fears. / The added stress on top of it all / This ginormous wall / I can’t get past. / I don’t know how. / Please tell me. / I don’t want to feel this way. / I’m tired. / I try to climb the wall / I’m out of breath, panting. / The wall appears impenetrable. / I wish it would just disappear...

mid-twenties. One and a half weeks ago I got the news that I was selected for my dream job. I’ve been working toward this since I was 18. When I got the news, I felt the happiest and healthiest I had felt in a long time. I finally did it. A few days after getting the job news, I found out I was two to three weeks pregnant. I saw everything start to slip through my fingers. Years of hard work disappeared as quickly as water down the drain...

numbness is what’s left after your first sexual assault, swamping over you like dark fog rolls in from the ocean. After your second, the numbness has already taken up space; it’s infected you, and thus you feel as though nothing has changed. It’s familiar. Nothing at all has changed. I have always been vocal about my experiences with mental health. I write poetry and blogs...

about subtlety, about settling in. This is not a story about rage or about force or trauma. This is story about a deep-seededness that becomes impossible to identify until you’re on the other side of it, way over across the way so that you can look at it. Put it in its place. This is my story. I got a real boyfriend my senior year of high school. While I felt that a boyfriend...

year of college I was the girl who didn't date. It wasn't for any weird reason and I didn't bring attention to it. I just didn't date. I flirted and got to know a few guys, but that was it. I think I kissed a boy my first week at school, we hung out for like a month, and then both said "nah, not interested." It wasn't my thing. I had bigger things to achieve and I wanted...

to the feeling of an unwanted guest, shaken to consciousness by alarm and confusion. I knew those hands, those fingers. They high fived me after I told a good joke, they hugged me and made me beam with pride, they held me when I was a newborn. Confused. Terrified. Frozen. Scared. Aroused? No, I didn’t want this. After I fled I was told that I...