I remember walking in on a conversation between my dad and brother about sisters being ‘useless’, since they did not birth you, and were not available to you sexually (not their wording, I think the word ‘fuckable’ was used. Ugh). I was so fucking disturbed by that. It was like, hello, dudes, I’m a fucking person in…

Of course you don’t; it was a tool your abuser used against you. After getting raped there by our babysitter, I dreaded going to sleep in my bed again. I tried to stay awake as long as I could. It’s what started my love of reading (escapism + staying awake, yay!), but it was also detrimental to my development.

honest question, how can something be not extra terrestrial, but foreign to earth? Where did it hail from, then?

That would be my dad, the first person I told when I (8 yo girl) told him about being raped by my 17 yo (male) babysitter. I wasn’t old enough to know better then, that shit fucked me up for a looooooooooong time.

My turning-malignant pleomorphic adenoma was removed orally, so I have a massive ass scar on the inside of my mouth. I don’t show anything, but there’s still checkups and fearing the results and hoping they caught it all (there was some spillage during the removal, so fingers crossed that all will remain well). The…

Tentacle-y dragons? Sign me up!

There are a thousand reasons why that was not an option. Maybe the bf was drunk, maybe she feared he wouldn’t believe her that this was unwanted. Maybe she was afraid of what he’d do to what was up to that point a friend. Maybe she froze, maybe she just wanted to get away from her attacker. Maybe she thought her…

As a woman, it really sucks to have been raped and then told to ‘get over it’, that is *if* you are believed (which I was not, initially). I’m sorry a shitty thing happened to you, but at least your bodily integrity is still your own, and I expect we share similar levels of disappointment in people we thought we could…

No, they’re saying that those diseases don’t deserve cancer’s funding.

Isn’t that like the bare minimum of respect boundaries? It’s always the little things that make the asshole, IMO.

Oh hun, I know how it feels! All the hugs :(

You do you, girl! The New Yorker is lucky to have you, and no doubt your writing and ambition will carry you far! Best of luck in your new endeavours, I am one of the lucky ones that will get to keep reading you :)

I hear you, and even though I am no one to you, you have my respect for your bravery, and my admiration for surviving both the assault and the abuse after. Feel the anger you (need to/can’t help but) feel. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s wrong, or feel like you have to apologise for it. You were failed, and that leaves…

yes, and that is *you*. You cannot magically extrapolate that all others apply the same wording conventions you do.