Trigger warning: family violence I was four years old. We lived in a little bungalow with a huge garden full of neatly trimmed roses. Mum is good at maintaining roses. …
Author: Anonymous
Trigger warning: family violence Psychologists say we search out similar situations to those we experienced as children. Scenarios which bring out similar emotions and allow us to reenact all those unresolved …
“You’re whiter than I am!” He/she/they say as they hold their tanned arm up to my pale limb. “What are you anyway, a 64th or something?” It’s why it took …
Writing this may make it seem too real. These are things I have not visited for a long time, these thoughts and actions have lived in a separate place I …
My husband rang me yesterday. An incident at school he said. A boy pulled our daughter’s pants down. In front of a group of other children. He put me on …
It’s the last day of term and parents nationwide are rejoicing at the thought of two weeks without the frantic rush of the school run, the tedium of nightly spelling, …
Trigger Warning and Content Note This is an essay about a range of distressing experiences, including sexual assault. Please take care. Fake fruit We were close, my large extended family. …
One day I kissed three different boys. All in the same day. Let’s call them Past, Present, and Future. This was completely uncharateristic of me. I’m one of those serial …
The church I grew up in, where I spent fifteen of the most impressionable years of my life, handed out lists of shows we couldn’t watch and music we couldn’t …
Yesterday I was in a grump. One of those kinds that feel like it is totally unfair but also completely legitimate. My parents were here. It’s a loaded phrase isn’t …
I’m 20. I’m sitting on a bus on my way home from trauma counselling, and I open up the book on healing my counsellor has lent me. The first page …
It’s like he died. But he hasn’t, he just lives in Woodville. It sounds like a joke, but really, it’s not. He is 24. He moved out, and left a …
It was so long ago now, but I remember the weight of his head in the crook of my arm, the elvish kink in the top of his ear, the …
I checked my phone, shivering in the winter dark. The metal of the bus shelter seat was fridge-like through my tights. The 6.17 was running late. Hopefully there’d still be …
Everyone has at least one major crush when they’re a teenager, don’t they? A celebrity, or a family friend. Perhaps some guy a few years above them at high school. …