When I was 13, I started dating my first boyfriend. The first time I ever touched a penis, I was on the phone to my dad and my boyfriend grabbed my hand and shoved it into his trousers in an attempt to be a tease.

When I was 14, that boyfriend and I started to argue a lot but I was so madly in love that I looked past it. One particular time stands out in my memory. I can’t remember exactly what we were arguing about - I think he may have been jealous about something or I tried to leave him - but I remember him punching himself in the head in front of me until I agreed to give in to his point of view.

When I was 15, I broke up with my first boyfriend to be with another boy who said he loved me and was going to leave his girlfriend for me. He didn’t leave his girlfriend but he did tell me in detail about how he self-harmed because he loved me so much.

When I was 16, I was at a Halloween party cosying up to the older brother of one of my childhood friends who I had lost touch with. Everyone else at this party was 18+ and I was wearing a corset and fishnets. Another guy at the party was giving me the eyes and I thought, fuck it, and kissed him. However, I wasn’t really attracted to this second guy and went back to pursuing the first. Towards the end of the night I started to feel too drunk and so went to lie down upstairs. The first guy came in and woke me up, which I was pretty happy about, and we fooled around for a while. Afterwards, he said he was going back to the party and I lay down again to try to sleep off my headache. After a little while, the second guy came in. He was trying to put his hands down my pants and I didn’t like it at all but I didn’t know how to say no. I just pretended to be passed out as he fumbled with me and eventually gave up.

When I was 17, I got incredibly drunk before going to a college dance. I ended up kissing four boys, none of whom I was particularly attracted to, and then going home with the ex boyfriend who had been pretty emotionally manipulative towards me when we were together a couple of years before. We started having sex and I began to cry. He finished and then went home, even though I cried throughout the entire thing.

When I was 18, I worked a job with shifts finishing at 9:30pm. The road leading to my student accommodation was a busy road during the day, but could be quite quiet at night and was a little out of town. Whilst walking on this road during the day I used to be beeped at and yelled at from cars, which aggravated me, but one evening on my way home from work I had an experience that really shook me up. About ten minutes away from home, a car on the opposite side of the road started crawling alongside me. It had tinted windows so I couldn’t see the driver. It followed me for a good few minutes, and the second I had to turn up a side road I started sprinting. I ran all the way to my front door without looking back because I was terrified.

When I was 19 I moved in with a boyfriend. He was pretty controlling: he wouldn’t let me smoke even though he did, he used to get angry if I went out without him… Etcetera. One evening I came in from an art exhibition after getting too drunk - I  was really upset and throwing up because a creepy guy had been pouring my vodka and given me far too much - but my boyfriend wouldn’t comfort me and refused to talk to me because he said it was my fault.

When I was 20, I broke up with that boyfriend, who I was living with alongside two of my best friends. He was adamant that he shouldn’t have to move out because I had broken up with him and it wasn’t fair, even though the two other housemates didn’t want him to stay. It took him four and a half months to move out. I bought a futon to sleep on as he insisted on sleeping in our bed. It got really cold during the winter and I eventually started sleeping in the bed again. A couple of times I caught him masturbating next to me. The worst thing he did happened one evening after he was saying some really upsetting things to me whilst I was physically backed into a corner. I snapped and tried to push him out of my way, but ended up scratching his arm. A week or so later, I noticed the scratch on his arm looked more like a gash. He had been picking at it to make it look worse and then told his work colleagues that I had attacked him.

When I was 21, I was walking through my hometown with my dad. A drunk friend of his, this really giant man who was loud and pretty scary, came up to us and asked my dad if I was his new girlfriend. When I disgustedly said no, the friend starts trying to come on to me. My dad did very little to defend me and at one point the guy wouldn’t let go of my hand. It was really unsettling. A year or so later the same guy, drunk again, came in to Ann Summers while I was working there and made me show him all the buttplugs. He said some really filthy things whilst he was there but I was the only employee on the shop floor and I didn’t want to antagonise him whilst I was alone by retorting or asking him to leave.

When I was 22, a female friend and I went travelling around Europe. We couchsurfed a few times and had some wonderful experiences being shown around Ghent and Cologne by locals. When we arrived in Dusseldorf we expected to have a similarly good time. Our host met us from the train station and I immediately sensed that something wasn’t quite right about him. I should have listened to my intuition. Later that evening I walked in from having a shower to find him massaging my friend’s feet. I felt uncomfortable, but as he was a professional masseur and she seemed to be okay with it I held my tongue. One thing lead to another and somehow I had agreed to let him massage us both despite my instincts screaming not to. He lurched to kiss my friend, who finally realised the gravity of the situation and told him that she had a boyfriend. Upon hearing this he turned his back to her and started asking if he could give me a full body massage, saying “just for five minutes” every time I said no. I said he was making me uncomfortable, which he ignored, so my friend reiterated what I had said. He turned to her and said coldly, “I’m not talking to you”. Eventually he gave up and said we should go to bed. Due to his living arrangements we all had to sleep in the same room. My friend and I confessed to each other in the morning that we had both tried to stay awake all night because we were so scared what he might do to us. My friend had used her Couchsurfing account to book the trip and the next day we reported him, giving an account of everything that had happened. Thankfully, Couchsurfing removed his account. However, a few weeks later I received a message from my friend with a screenshot of a review left on her account. Our previous host had made a new account and left a review for her saying that we had stolen from him, which was a blatant lie.