Look Me In the Eye

I have been reading Littoral Mermaid’s blog, which I really enjoy.

There is a very interesting post “Hmmmmm”, which contrasts the report on Scottish punter’s attitudes to prostituted women and girls with a course in the Philippines which help young men to stop using prostitution.

One quote that struck me in the report on the Philippines course was -

“We don’t even care. If you look in their eyes, you’ll realise not one of them enjoys what she is doing.”

For me, this triggers many memories of the callousness of living in prostitution.

Most punters refuse to look into the eyes of the prostituted woman and girl. Most only look into her eye as a means of control.

One thing I still have nightmares about is all the eyes of the men that raped and tortured me.

They haunt me.

When I was gang-raped, my strongest memory is of the men standing around watching.

I still can feel their eyes dissecting my torture.

I felt like I was in a science experiment. Testing how much pain and humiliation I could endure.

Those men saw me. They did not care.

No, they did not see me, all they saw a replay of their porn fantasy.

They saw me, but they never looked deep into my eyes.

They refused to see I was human.

I remember one man who insisted I keep my eyes open as for six hours he sexually and mentally tortured me.

“I want you to remember everything I do to you.”

How can I forget. It is in every cell of my body.

I don’t need to see being filled in every hole he could find. I don’t need to see being chocked. I don’t need to see having sperm pressed into my skin and hair.

I don’t need to see how he said it would make me forget my stepdad. I don’t to see his laughter when I almost died.

I really don’t to see his eyes that are so cold and still. I don’t to see that hate.

He stared me straight into my eyes. His eyes made me know there was no escape. His eyes took all the fight out of my body.

He looked me in the eye, but I was invisible to him.

Many punters never looked into my eyes.

I prefer not to see their eyes, that was too much like giving away my soul.

I prefer to turn my head away. I prefer to be on my stomach. I prefer the lights off. I prefer to stand against a wall.

I hated their eyes.

Their eyes saw me as a piece of dirt that they can fuck over and over.

I thought if I did see their eyes, I could learn to not care about their contempt.

If I did not see their eyes, I could pretend it was an “accident” that I was hurting. It was my fault that I was felt degraded.

I thought I would get use to it.

I never did.

But by seeing their eyes I protected myself a little.

Also by not looking into their eyes, I was able to keep part of essential being safe.

They could rape me. They could verbally abuse me. They could torture me. They could bring to the edge of death.

But they would never know me. I was always separate.

I would not allow them to see into my eyes.

When I read about the Philippines, I thought that some young men if caught early enough can be deter from using prostituted women and girls, if they can see into their eyes.

I think there is a small window of hope, where young men are experimenting with prostitution, and may still have enough conscious to see the harms they are doing.

Then they can see the prostituted woman and girl as a human.

Sadly, he may need to be told she could be his mother, sister or girlfriend for this to happen.

This makes me sad, for it still places the prostituted woman or girl as “other”.

But if this is needed to make men see that prostituted women and girls are humans who they will be harming - then I don’t care what language is used.

I want that some young men can be disgusted that they ever thought it was ok to buy another woman or girl for their orgasm.

I hope that some of those men can say to other young men that it is an abuse of the women’s or girl’s human rights.

It may be a small amount of young men who go on these courses.

But, small stones may make large ripples.

(Sorry there is a gap between this and the next post. If someone can tell how to fix this, coz I am a computer twit). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illness

Today I received double dose of sad news. That my stepmum is back in hospital, and my eldest cat is very ill- (oh that vet’s bills are bloody expensive in England).

My stepmum has had bowel cancer for a few years. Every time we think it is going well, or at least being stable, there is a relapse.

She has internal bleeding, which is horrible.

It is very sad, but also makes me angry in irrational way.

This is because stepdad has always put pain into the world, without any conscious. But he hardly ever get ill. His life is a cruise.

Whilst my Dad and stepmum have many very bad illnesses. Their lives are a struggle.

They are both very good people, who always try to do good for others. They have never abuse anyone. They made mistakes, but have always had enough goodness to say sorry.

There is no justice.

I get very angry when people speak of karma.

I don’t believe that my stepdad will ever suffer enough in his lifetime for his crimes. I think he will continue to have a happy life.

I don’t believe in karma.

I have seen too many good people have too much shit in their lives.

My cat is very ill. It may be kidney disease, she is old.

I have live with Florence round 15 years, the longest relationship of my life. There has been so many changes in that time.

When I received Florence, I was close to death.

I was still having a certain degree of male violence in my life. I was slowly realising I was choosing to live.

Florence was very sick, and I nurse her into wanting to live.

Although I was in a relationship with a human, Florence give me the will to believe I could be a good person.

By becoming a nurse, I learnt that I had a heart. I learnt that I didn’t have to give up.

So Florence is precious to me.

I love most cats. I not much of an animal lover, but cats have enough mystery for me to love them.

Most animals bore me, but cats relax me.

Also they give me space, and don’t hang around too much.

I am going to the vet tomorrow to have blood tests.

I think she is just aging.

But it is sad.

 

Justify This

I have been reading “Challenging Men’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland” which uses the punter’s word to justify their use of prostituted women and girls.

What struck me was the cold callousness of their words. And their embedded belief of entitlement.

“It’s like if you’re hungry you’re not bothered with where you buy food.”

God, I remember that feeling too well. How punters just viewed me as any other “whore”. I was nothing but goods they buying.

There was nothing glamourous about how they choose me. They just went down the line of girls, and took some of us back to our flats. As prostituted girls, we were interchangeable.

We were goods to be brought.

But for the men buying women is “adventurous”. They choose to believe that prostituted women and girls are not like other women.

They are “free-spirited”,  they need to have lots of sex. Prostituted women and are believed to have a looser moral system.

All excuses to ignore that the men are harming the women and girls.

For men will believe that rape is rare or cannot happened to prostituted women and girls.

Hell, how can it be rape when you have exchanged money. To say it is rape, would be withholding of goods to the buyer.

Never mind that many women and girls speak of prostitution as “paid rape” or “voluntary slavery”. 

What is more important is that men have easy access to sex, especially for sexual acts that their partners will not perform.

For men’s orgasms must happened, or they may not be able to function.

After it is a fact according to punters that prostituted women and girls -

“They basically do anything for money.”

Reading the punter’s words, I throw back to the cold world of prostitution. A world where men make prostituted women and girls into dolls they can manipulate.

Men use prostituted women and girls as a power-trip.

They may not say that in the public sphere. But, each time a man pays for a woman or girl, he paying for her to do precisely everything that he desires.

She has no rights.

“In order to really enjoy prostitution you need to know how to control them.”

That boostful language is keep away from the public sphere. Away from “good” women’s ears.

But that is how I remembered punters behaving and speaking.

I was controlled by fear. I was controlled by confusion.

I heard -

“We could kill any time, only joking.”

I did many sexual acts that damage my mind and body. I knew I had no right to say no.

Control was there all the time, even in the silences.

The thing that makes me very angry, is when men justify their use of prostituted women and girls by saying that it prevents rape.

Christ.

That is saying that they are rapists, but it does not matter. 

It is fine to rape a prostituted woman or girl for she is sub-human.

Her fear is unimportant. Her pain does not exist. It is not rape, for she did not complain.

I was raped over and over. I know many of the men using me knew it was rape. They did not care.

They continue through my fear. They continue through my agony. They continue if I went unconscious.

No, they were focused on their fantasy, and I meant nothing but an object to wank into.

It was “paid rape”.

I read the report. and I was amazed at how these men spoke words I thought would never be public.

“I think there will always be guys that go to prostitutes… something in the paper about guys that have steak at home, still go out for burgers - because they can, it was there.”

To end, a quote from Michelle Tea -

“Every day I was witness to the worst of men. Their carelessness and grand entitlement. The way they can so profoundly disconnect from what it is they’re having sex with, the way they think they own the world, watch them purchase a woman…. I thought maybe all the men called prostitutes. It was a terrible thought, but really, what did I care. There was a system in place that was older and stronger than I could begin to imagine…. I was just a girl…. If I had any power I would make it so that nobody was ever brought or sold or rented,”  

 

Ghosts Follow Me

As I strive to build a future for myself, my past follows me. It trips me up.

Sometimes I really wonder if I will ever have stable happiness for months on end. Not just a few hours here and there, but the rest that comes from waking in the morning, knowing my past won’t interrupt my day-to-day existence.

I feel I deserve that.

But instead I feel haunted.

I am haunted when I hear mention of Cambridge. I try so hard to remember the beauty. I try to remember going punting. I try to remember picnics on the way to Grantchester.

But I haunted,

Haunted as each street bring back memories of my isolation. Haunted as I only viewed the Cam as a place to drown or throw away money I got through prostitution. 

Haunted as I trace railway lines wanting to run away. Haunted as I remembered each pub where men whisper in my ear - “How much money to fuck you”. Haunted as I see bikes and want to smash them.

I want to love Cambridge. I was born there, my family have lived there for three generations. 

I go back on rare occasions and try to be a tourist.

Only I can’t breathe in Cambridge.

I am haunted by Norfolk.

Again I want to love Norfolk. I see the bleak beauty and it speaks to my heart. I love vast skies, I love the fierce cold winds of Norfolk.

Only Norfolk chills me to the bone.

I was in Norfolk off and on between 6 to 17. Norfolk was my stepdad’s kingdom.

He brought a house in a remote part of North Norfolk.

There was only a bus once a week to Norwich. All I saw was endless roads going nowhere.

I am haunted by those roads.

My stepdad told me tale in Norfolk. Tales of how children disappeared. He said children could be buried in fields, buried under hedges. Children disappear and no-one will care.

I still am haunted with nightmares of being buried alive. I still see fields and wonder.

In Norfolk, I learnt to heightened my hearing I listen for his footsteps as he came to my bedroom. I had a window above my bed, and I heard him staring at me as I slept.

In Norfolk I learnt not to sleep deeply.

I was shown the hard-core porn in Norfolk. It infected me with it’s poison, and I had nowhere to run to.

I haunted over and over by those images. I try so hard to remember sex is not about violence, those images pollute that. I can’t stop the dead eyes following me.

Porn poisoned my freedom to have a relaxed sexuality. It haunts me even when I just want to kiss.

Norfolk was a prison to me. And I so want it to be just a place of beauty.

I am so haunted by the date rapes I went through.

I am haunted by the part of me that tells me I was stupid to trust.

I need to forgive myself. I need to know who I was then. I need to say I needed to believe that men could be good, even when there no reason to believe that. I need to say I needed affection then.

When I see with a clear eye, I see that my date rapes were planned. That the “friendship” was grooming.

I was viewed as a slut. Friendship was just a sick joke.

One man who haunts me was “friend” for eight years before he decided it was time to rape me. Then he raped for six hours, using as much sadism as he could imagined. Using my words of my past abuses against me. He said -

“This will make you have something else to think than your stepdad”.

God, he haunts me,

I am haunted by getting close to men, only to be treated as a piece of dirt. Some ignore after sex. But too many thought it was a relationship.

I am hunted by my silence. I am haunted that I played their games. 

I know no better. I was too scared to acknowledge my fear.

And I so wanted human touch.

I am haunted in every cell in my body by the prostitution I lived in.

I need to name that time. I need to believe it. I feel it to the depths of my soul.

I need to face the ghosts of the men who torture for their orgasm. I will face their hate and control.

I will face my terror of that time, and go towards my future.

I am haunted by not knowing so much.

I do not how many men raped and tortured me. I do not not how many times it happened.

I know my body is sickened as it knows it was prodded, hit, penetrated in all holes I knew I had. My body wretches with memories of having no escape from pain. My body cannot cry without chocking as my mind try to remember.

They stole my body for so long.

I will let my body connect to my mind. I will let my body and mind remember.

Remember the cold hate as I was Iaid out as porn object. Remember the manipulation of my body to suit their fantasy.

My pain was of no importance.

Now I will feel that pain, but it haunts so much of the time.

I will remember how I thought I knew how bad sexual violence could get, and there always sometime my mind could not fathom.

I could not let their fantasy be real to me, I had to close it out.

Now it haunts me as I am sick in the bathroom.

Prostitution went under my skin. It became all I thought I was. I deserved nothing more.

I have left that world, but it still haunts me.

It haunts me when I look at men and wonder if they would fuck me for money.

It haunts when I try to have a relationship and go detached when they are affectionate.

It haunts me if I try to have loving sex and all I can do is to perform for the other person, and forget my needs.

It haunts me when I let my mind go empty in fear all I remembered it the constant tortures I lived with.

It haunts me I do self-destructive behaviour and cannot remember why I am doing it.

Yes, I have left the world of prostitution, but now I am fighting my most difficult battle.

The battle to builds a future that allows my past to a place.

I have always been a fighter, and I truly this is a battle that is worth winning.

And if I can drown out many of my ghosts on the way, that will be a massive bonus. 

 

 

Just Don’t Want to Know

At the moment the world’s media is obsessed with “one-off” case of male sexual violence in Austria. It is as weird and nothing to do with the casual sexual violence that happens to women and children on a day-to-day level.

I don’t know but I see the case in Austria as tip of an ever growing iceberg.

In my personal opinion there are many women in many countries who are imprisoned by male sexual violence.

They may be walking free, but male sexual violence is controlling their minds and their bodies.

I see children, especially girls, who live with the constant threat of sexual violence. They are brainwashed to believed that their only worth is to be a sex toy.

Many lived for years unable to escape the mental, physical and sexual abuse. Many cannot imagine there is a life beyond the violence.

They may not be locked in a cellar. They may look like they are leading a “normal” life. They may go to school, college or work. 

But these girls are living in a prison.

Only the media turns a blind eye to that type of abuse. It happens too often to be worth reporting.

Hell, if it is so bad the girl would tell someone wouldn’t she.

So child sexual abuse is seen, but little is done.

Basically it is no longer sensational enough to be reported.

So the media doesn’t want to know.

My memories of prostitution was being isolated from the “real world”.

That is a form of imprisonment.

Many prostituted women and girls are closed off from outside contact. Or they may have relative freedom, but are brainwashed to believe that the outside world will condemned them.

When I was in the world of prostitution, I was encouraged to believe all I was an object that “liked” pain when I performed sex.

The world of prostitution formed me into that object, by teaching me to ignore the pain. Taught me not to speak.

I was an object that was there to do whatever the punters wanted.

I hide my disgust. I suppressed my fear. I ignored my anger.

I had no rights to be a human.

Hell, that is living inside a prison.

Yes I was “free”. For I went home to my own flat. I had times without male violence.

But for 21 years of my life, I lived with the constant threat of male violence. Whether child sexual abuse, rapes by “friends” or prostitution.

In the times where I was not being abused by men, I had no freedom.

The male violence was so ingrained in me that the “real world” was surreal to me.

I did not know how to live outside of violence.

I was living in a prison of my mind.

I had told and shown so often that all I worth was to be a sex object. I had told and shown that all I deserved was violence.

I was brainwashed to believe I had freedom, as I rotted in my prison.

But violence to prostituted women and girls is uninteresting to the media.

For don’t ask for it with their lifestyles.

So the media ignores the rapes and tortures that happened to prostituted women and girls.

They don’t want to know.

This post is very personal.

I am sick of how the media acts all shocked at their chosen monsters. They pick one or two serial killers to focus on. They are shocked that a father imprisoned his daughters.

But they don’t report men murdering prostituted women and girls one at a time.

They don’t report fathers who rape their daughters from childhood into adulthood.

They don’t report wives raped and battered by their husbands.

They don’t report women in porn being raped and tortured.

I could on and on with the endless forms of male sexual violence the media doesn’t want to know.

All those women and children are living in a prison.

I am furious that men like the father in Austria are seen as “freaks”, when they just taking male sexual violence to the logical extreme. 

 

Sometimes It So Damned Hard

Although I wrote earlier my mind will not shut up with shouting about my years of prostitution and having “date rapes”.

It shouts say what you can, and maybe then relax into TV.

It so hard coz I just want to think of nothing. I want to be blank again.

This week has been exhausting.

Every emotions I had suppressed has entered into me. I am drowning as I feel everything I don’t want to know.

I want to scream, but I don’t have that much energy.

When I choose not self-harm through prostitution, the floodgates opened.

Now, seven days later I need to write who I was then. To write is to forgive.

When I was 14, I thought I was an adult. I thought I could control my world.

I knew I was not a child. For I imagined children were innocent, and I had lost that so far back.

I disowned that I could be a child. For children were vulnerable. Children let themselves get damaged.

By the time I was 14, I had grown to hate children.

I hated that they were loved even when they were bad. I hated they were always so happy, even after being shouted at.

I could not let children in my heart.

As I was hurt over and over, my anger went to that I was still viewed as a child.

How could I be a child when every Friday my stepdad put his mouth and fingers into my cunt.

How can I be a child when I spend hours walking the streets.

No, I could not be child.

That is who I was before I entered prostitution.

I entered with the knowledge I would have to give out sex. But that was as far as my imagination went.

I did not know that I would be broken.

I thought I would ok, I thought I was tough enough to handle sex with strangers.

After all, I was not innocent. My stepdad had sex with me on a regular basis.

I was so naive.

Now, I cry from the bottom of my feet at my youth. I cry so hard at my true innocence.

When I was in the flat. When I was being gang-raped in silence and near-dark. When I knew men were staring down at. When I had no idea where the pain would come from. When I was thrown away.

Then I was broken.

Then I could no cry. I could not speak. I saw injuries and cuts, but could not see it was me.

Then was the true deadness. I was a robot.

And being a robot is safer than reality.

I see my life. I see now I was using bad sex as my way to self-harm.

But I never deserved what happened. However much I had been taught to hate myself, I never deserved to be tortured.

I cannot remember how many times I was gang-raped.

I remember the degradation as men would use my body to re-enact rapes in films, in pictures and in books.

I know porn infected every gang-rape I was put through. Gang-rapes are created by porn.

I will never believe that the majority of men that raped me did not use porn on a regular basis.

I felt the porn as they manipulated my body. I felt the porn as they fucked me everywhere they could imagine.

I felt I was drowning in porn.

All they did was to degrade me to the maximum, whether it was gang-rapes or single rapists.

Why else would they put sperm into my eyes. Why rub sperm into all my skin, why rub it in my hair.

Why do brutal anal sex. Why have men ramming my throat, my anus, my vagina at the same time.

Why strangle me. Why put pillows on my head. 

Why say “you know you want this”.

Why beat me up. Why throw me out the flat when they have finish.

That is nothing to do with sex. There is no respect there, there is no interest in my welfare.

No, I enter prostitution at 14, and learnt very fast I was a non-human.

Then the small part of me that cling to being a child died.

Now, I want her back. 

 

Seeing Through the Void

I cannot remember ever having a visual memory. This has made seeing the abuse I lived through prostitution.

The last thing I remember seeing in my mind-eye was the hard-core porn.

Seeing that murdered my visual imagination.

Before I read books and pictured them. I would see Narnia, imagine Treasure Island.

Before I could dream.

I could rest when I shut my eyes.

Porn made my mind close down. It did not want to know.

It place a void instead of visual imagination. That void made me know the terror. 

All I know is gut tells about the violence I lived. I feel the fear, I know the terror and I breathe the grief in every cell of my body.

Still I see nothing in my mind’s eye.

All I know to do is to say in detail how my body was remember.

I feel remembering the violence I lived through is like trying to grab water.

When I remember my stepdad, I see his face. I know his name. I feel his breath on me.

He is solid.

This I do not have with the rapes in my teens and twenties.

I want to have those men named and shamed. I want them to rot in prison.

I want more than anything to see them as individuals so I can them as the man that rape me - not a general john.

It rots me inside that I cannot see their faces. It all melts into one.

I see no face. I see a void.

I lived with years of extreme sexual violence. This my mind cannot handle.

I remember times of violence. I do not know my age. It all melts in to one.

Many acts of violence were repeated over and over. This all melts into one.

It fall into the void.

This void can paralyses me.

It make me know I will never have justice for all that sexual torture.

All I know to do is work to get justice for others. 

 

On Elements

For much of my life I have lived in my head, and not taken much notice of my body. Part of this have meant I have not felt I in the world, just on it.

I am writing about the four elements. For I wish to explore how detached I was, and maybe an opening to accepting my body.

This is hard, because I was made to believe that my body betrayed me.

AIR

For too much of my life, the only reason I know I was alive was that air went in and out my body.

Breath was there in my every moment. It give me a slow strength to believe that there might be a future.

But I grow to hate how each morning when I would wake into life.

I would see my chest go up and down, and know I had not lost all my air in the night.

I have always done shallow breathing. Only when I smoke do I want air in my lungs.

Air was too clean for me. Air was too simple.

I did not deserve to be still breathing it in.

I remember how I could not stop breathing. I live as the violence grow and grow.

I did not stop breathing as a 6-year-old, and the pain of my stepdad’s finger in my cunt stopped my heart. No, I was still breathing.

I did not stop beathing as I cut my arms.

I did not stop breathing as men put pain into every cell of my body. As they stared into me.

I lay dead. But I was still breathing.

I hated breath as it let in the pain.

Sometimes I had brief times I touch air and it could be good.

I watched birds of prey controlling the air.

I stood on cliffs letting air toss memories and pain away.

On rare occasions, I breath deep and did not feel scared.

But mostly air was life, and I hated life.

EARTH

Earth reminds me of death.

That was a comfort for many years.

I was in love with death as a child. It was an end. It was a place I would not be hurt.

I wanted to be buried in the earth. I wanted worms to eat me.

I needed to be nothing but earth.

I had no love of touching earth. I hated gardening.

I walked for hours, but with little regard for my surroundings.

I was blind to the beauty of the earth.

My walks were the walk of the dead. I was lost.

Often I would in place I had lived in for many years, and I was lost.

I was lost as I could not remember how I arrive and where I had been.

Sometimes I stood touching the earth, and pain enter my body.

I could remember where it can from.

Sometimes I stood so still that I thought I may cry. I always stopped that.

I walked and walked. I could not stay still.

I move to stop thoughts. I move to imagine I was safe.

Now, I do see the beauty in the earth. I see it in nature, I see it in buildings. Now, I walk and I can look.

FIRE

Fire has always fascinated me.

I watch it’s destruction with joy. It makes me laugh.

Fire in my belly forced to live.

In my mind’s eye I burnt all the porn I was shown by my stepdad. Leaving a trail of destruction. I knew I wanted to kill my stepdad.

My fire was a slow burner, but it never went out.

The first time I meet my stepdad, I raged that I did not like him.

This rage was the petrol to my fire.

My fire keep my mind safe.

Men treated my body as a dustbin.

Men pour all hate into me.

But I had my rage protecting me.

Men would rape me.

Men would treat as live porn.

Men would beat me.

Only the fire in me meant they could never reach my mind.

Men could never owned me.

Not whilst I hated them.

WATER

Water has never felt safe to me.

I was abused in the bath by my stepdad. I was often made to wash before and/or after the violence in prostitution or “date rapes”.

Water is functional to me. I would rather ignore it as much as possible.

I have grow to like baths, but I would not see having a bath as a way to relax.

I cannot shut my eyes in water. I may feel the abusers in my body.

In water the traces of the violence sinks into my body.

I have always love to watch the sea. Then I can feel nothing matters.

I can know I don’t always have to stay in control.

For much of my life, I did not drink much water.

I did not want to be healthy. I did not want my body to continue.

Water meant going forward. But, I just went forward to yet more abuse.

My hatred of life became an irrational hate of water.

Why be refreshed.

I was just being freshened up so I appear suitable for rape.

I did not want to be well.

Men rape me however ill I looked.

I still have many mixed feelings about water.

But I do drink quite a lot these days.

FINAL WORDS

I think I slowly letting myself live. I am letting myself feel that I am worth my place to breathe.

I allowing myself to see my environment. To feel I belong inside the earth.

I letting my fire go into being creative, not just dreams of destruction. It burns still, but on a low heat.

I allowing my body not to dry up and give up. Water helps it rest for a while.

I try to bring elements into me. I try to not to live detached.

I want to be whole, not a robot.

 

On Courage

I wish to write, even though I am completely mentally drained.

I am writing because I think I am having some understanding of what courage Survivors have to have.

It is the the courage to go forward with life.

I feel that in the last few days I have reach an emotional state where fear and grief is drowning me.

This for most of my life fear has underpinned my day-to-day experience.

I have live with fear for so long, that most of the time I do not recognise it.

I first felt fear as a young.

It was ignored, so I suppressed my terror.

Only now, it eats at my body. It makes me lose all my energy.

I thought I was depressed, when I was terrified.

I could not let myself be scared, so I turned to self-hate.

When I feel fear, I can see that my stepdad choose to abuse me. I see I did not want to see porn.

When I let in fear, I know I never wanted to be prostituted. I know I hated all the violence.

But, I had to make it what it was not.

I was told over and over that I “force” my stepdad to use me. I was a flirt. I throw myself at him.

I was a tart.

This infected me with self-hate.

I could not stop him raping me. Whatever I said or did made no difference.

So all that was left was to blame myself.

That was the only thing that made sense.

I felt all I was was a “whore”. All I deserved was to be hurt by sex.

For me entering prostitution was a logical action. I know I was worthless.

Prostitution and bad sex became my way to self-harm.

I found that the men left little evidence on my body of their violence.

This matter to me, because I could self-harm and there no cuts or marks for others to see.

Self-hate through prostitution and bad sex is more than damaging to the body, it is more than mentally damaging.

It destroys everything that made me an individual.

I was more than worthless. I had become nothing.

I was raped and raped. I lost track of how many men. 

I was raped in too many places. I cannot remember where I was.

I was raped until I was on auto-pilot each time I was with men or a man.

I am scared to remember how that auto-pilot work.

I would be undressed on a bed without thinking why.

I would move into positions that give me pain, but I know from porn.

I was lost.

I did not know how to find myself.

I write this because I did go into that auto-pilot on Saturday.

This is where I understand the meaning of courage.

Since my mind has been showing me the reality of the hate and violence I live through in my teens and twenties, I have been in a great deal of pain.

On Saturday I wanted to run away from myself.

I know having bad sex would make dead again. I know if I went back to hating myself, I would back in a world I kind of understood.

Feeling my past was too bloody overwhelming.

I was getting too scared.

I was like a robot with that man on Saturday.

I was falling back to thinking I was worthless.

But then, courage enter my soul.

Courage to remember I was worth more than being a fuck-object.

That no money was worth the humilation.

I had the courage to walk away.

Then real courage enter me.

All the suppressed emotions re-enter my body and mind.

I have always used self-harm to kill my emotions.

Courage is allowing those feeling in, and not running away.

I feel really terrible. A complete wreck.

But I know I am doing the bravest thing I have done for a long time.

 

Spinning Spinsters

I just wanted to say that the fabulous Spinning Spiinsters has put another piece of my writing on their site.

Please read that site, for there are some really inspiring and moving writings by women.

Thanks so much, I really needed to have a boost.