Yes, I hate him.

Once he got us a free stove – we never had any money. It was a built-in – designed to be set into cabinets, and we didn’t have cabinets to set it into, but it was free and we were poor, so we took it. Since it didn’t have feet, or a drawer underneath it…

Who Am I?

The things that hurt most are the things that make me question my identity. Or, perhaps the reasons abuse survivors are so easily hurt is that everything makes them question their identity. If you lie to me, I wonder if the reason is that I deserve to be lied to. If you blow me off, I…

Expectations and Liars

The man I married turned out to not be a very nice man. Once I made split pea soup for supper. He raved about it. It was such good soup! He’d never had soup so good. I should definitely make it again. How did I even do that? I was pleased, of course, and basked…

Crushed Flowers

The first dreams I can remember having were nightmares. I could not have been older than three. The thickest truck tires I could imagine, larger around than I was tall, were rolling, crushing. Great huge thumbs were pressing down, crushing. Little pink flowers were being crushed. Little girls in pink dresses were being crushed. I…

Consensual?

We were both eighteen. We had both grown up in very conservative, religious homes, and in the same conservative church. We met at Bible college. We were friends because he was engaged to a girl back home. But then they broke up and after several months we started dating. We were still at that Bible college.…

Safety Pins

Immediately following the election last November, many of those in the US who opposed the new President Elect took to wearing safety pins. I was among them. The safety pin campaign was drawn from an earlier campaign in the UK, in which people had worn safety pins to both show solidarity with minorities and immigrants…