This isn’t guidance on how to make the decision to have a termination, only you can make that decision with the help of professionals and those who love you.

Oh trauma, you seem to consume my existence. You left a nasty invisible scar on my brain and now demand my full attention. You leave me no choice but to reluctantly oblige your demands. Forcing me to accept and journey through my trauma to navigate myself a new safe path. I’m from Christchurch so like all the roads here, mine has some bumps in the way.

I never knew death before my twenties. I’d never lost anyone before then. I think I started to believe that death as a concept was something stigmatised. My inner realist understands that death is ever approaching the longer we live, with the more risks we take. I guess I had it in my head, a form of acceptance; death is inevitable. I’ve been fortunate in my youth to have held onto every single one of my extended family members, every single one of my close friends.

There is nothing more selfish than a couple freshly in love.

I was standing in front of the mirror when I had the overwhelming realisation that

my body is not meant to look like anything.

My body is meant to move, to be.

When you whole-heartedly understand and accept that,

you will be set free.

There is a famous Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painting of a woman reclining in a harem, entitled La Grande Odalisque (1814). Her pose is elegant but seductive. She is both objectified and exoticized, and Ingres’ version of an idealised white beauty culturally appropriating the shit out of a fictional Orient.

I’d never questioned my sexuality until I met her. We were inexplicably drawn to one another. It was platonic at first, an innocent kind of adoration that soon developed into a deep friendship. But with every new day came the daunting realisation that it was never going to be enough. We fought how we felt at every turn, I tried to tell myself that it would fade, but we loved each other seemingly without reason.

There is this almost out of body push and pull of ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ versus ‘I know exactly what I’m doing’. My head warms, my eyes blur and it’s as if all the fragmented versions of myself crash into one another, fighting and flailing against themselves until I choose what to do next.  It happened whilst I typed this.

The process of getting diagnosed with BPD was particularly long for me. A number of health professionals played musical chairs with various SSRI's and disorders and even at one point, concluded that there was actually no mental illness present at all. Finally the very sheer curtain of 'high functioning' was drawn, leaving behind a diagnosis, a pharmaceutical power couple and a clinical psychologist. Lucky me. No really, fucking lucky me.

I’ll be honest, this is my first time writing anything with the intention of getting it published. And I am beyond ecstatic that it is about something I have fallen in love with, dancing, otherwise known as stripping.

I have had two surgical abortions, the first at 22 and the second at 26. In many ways I think I tried to ignore the reality of the first pregnancy and its subsequent termination and that is the way it somewhat remains to this day. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my decision the first time around.

I was first diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) when I was 16

Last year I had a miscarriage…