DC: SM owns all.

Prologue

From the outside looking in, my life would seem damn near perfect. My family is like a cookie, sweet with a few nuts. My friends are my life support. My job is my dream.

I grew up priveleged by many standards. My parents, though divorced, never made me want for anything. In their eyes, I was better than they were. I was what they could never be. I was brazen and headstrong and successful.

I never dated much. I used the excuse of my parents divorce to cushion me from that world of potential heartache and regret. At some point, I decided that I would rather sit at home with ice cream and a movie than to go out and risk my emotional sanity and my ego.

When I was in college, I fell in love hard. We dated for a year and moved in together. Two months later, he was a different person. No, he wasn't. He was exactly the same. I just got to see more of it.

Near the end of our relationship, I came home to find that he had cheated on me with this swizzle stick of a woman that he met online. She was in our home. Sitting on our couch. Fucking my boyfriend.

I've never felt such rage as I did that night. She left and I kicked him and punched him and gave him back as much of the hurt as I could that he had given me. Then I locked myself in "our room" and cried myself to sleep.

I spent the month afterwards trying to figure out a new living arrangement. The time I had to spend in that house after we broke up was nothing short of gut-wrenching. I drove to work every day with a boulder in my stomach and a fluttering in my chest. My world felt like it was imploding.

Before him, I was a fun-loving, intelligent, secure, confident, young woman. After him, I was distant, shaky, and as insecure as I'd ever been in my entire life. If it wasn't for my friends who stayed by my side until I was sane enough to function again, I'm not sure I would have made it.

My world changed drastically afterward even with my friends involvement. I sought out male attention to prove that I could have what I wanted. You would be surprised how many men want to sleep with bigger girls. Sleep with, but not date. A girl gets tired of hearing "You have such a pretty face, if only you'd lose a few pounds."

Fast forward a few years and my mindset has somewhat changed. Baggage aside, I'm pretty damn fantastic and I know it. The junk in my trunk has made it difficult to show men who I am. Unless they are willing to look past the physical and really see me, I am often cast aside before I even have a chance to utter my name in introduction.

I'm not even sure I know how to be truly intimate with a man. The first and only time I let someone in, they hurt me so badly that it took me years to begin to overcome their damage.

What happens if I let him in and he shatters me? I may be a big girl, but I have a thin skin and I'm not sure if I can handle another heartbreak.

I don't know how I can be so confident in the rest of my life and so utterly incompetent when it comes to love.