Meeting Craig has been so good for me. We talk all the time, and I really feel that for the first time in such a long time, it’s safe for me to really be myself.

We talk about almost everything, and I never feel that I have to hold back with him. The only thing we don’t discuss is how I feel about my body and sex. He knows that I was rejected for most of the last few years, but I’ve never shared with him just how much the constant rejection affected me. He doesn’t know about the abuse – I’m not ready to share that with anyone yet.

I have met a group of women who are all in a similar boat to me. We met on a women’s forum where most people talk about their children, work or fashion, but we all discovered that we’re single at the same time, and a friendship has formed. We live in different parts of the country, and we are all struggling with various areas of life due to past relationships or current situations. The one thing we all seem to have in common is body issues.

We’ve all talked about how we’re not body confident, some more so than others, and we try to help each other feel better, but tonight I realised something. The only way to make myself feel better about the way I look is to see that my body is beautiful despite the droopier breasts, the fuller belly, the tired eyes, the wrinkles and the past rejection. I also realised that there is no better way of doing that than the way I used to – with self-portraits – so I set up the camera, and I made myself find the beauty in me.

I may not be a model or even anywhere close to it, and I definitely don’t have the perfect body, but seeing the pictures showed me that I’m not as bad as I thought I was. I’m definitely not worthy of years of rejection. The photos have shown me that the lack of sex life and the constant rejection of me were not about me or my body.

They were about Tom.