Lost Years

This a stream of consciousness or a kind of letter to my lost youth – it mainly about from 14 to 27 – but it cannot be linear or even have sense of time and place.

It cannot be that clear – only written into the silences and gaps of that time, written to speak to the pain that has little escape.

All I can do is write, and hope I find some speech for my lost youth.

I know her as she screams in my stomach. I know her as my head wants to explodes seeking out her truths.

I know but always like a ghost, my lost youth is out of reach.

I want to tell her how much I love her, how proud I am of her, how much her courage stuns me – only she cannot hears as her silent screaming drowns out all idea that she had exited and is who I am now.

I know that may appear nonsense – but how do you mend a past where all hope was stolen? How do say it will get better – when in every cell of your mind and body you know it can only gets worse?

How do say to that lost past, the only thing that made you exit was knowing you would die – how do say that when your lost youth want so much to be rescued or to fight her way out.

All I know to say is that courage is more complicated than being a fighter or even believing you can viewed an end.

Courage for my lost youth was learning to adapt into hell – but always keeping parts of herself that no punter, no sex trade profiteers, no judgemental outsiders could touch or even reach me.

I have no real words for that private part – call it my soul, say it is my spirit, named it as an essence.

All I know it is the founding stone of all courage that is inside all women and girls trapped inside the sex trade.

I know that between 14 to 27, I was on the receiving end of sadistic sex.

I know I survived by accepting the unacceptable. By adapting, I give myself the chance to live and maybe with luck, I may leave the world of hate and violence.

I saw no exit, I disbelieved anyone care enough to help or even see me, I had no idea that I would survived one punter from the next punter – or if some manager may just kill me.

I thought I may die by “accident”, I may die for the punters or managers were bored with me, I may kill myself just to pissed them off, I may just be murdered in the casual way all whores are killed.

I never believed I would live – so I became careless of how my body was treated, I throw myself into alcohol and try to stop sleeping.

I was not living on the edge, that is far too romantic – I was drowning in my own blood and guts.

I know I screaming for help – I was pushing at all envelopes.

I was rejecting anyone who was caring, I was smashing up bikes, I was not paying rent to be thrown out, I was smashes up my own living space, I was walking the streets at night when not with violent men, and was drinking to sink the Titanic.

I was lost – but no-one could be bothered to find me.

I don’t blame them – I lived in a time and place where prostitution was made invisible, or seen as something that “nice” middle-class girls like me would not even know existed.

Also, like so-many prostitutes I became very good at hiding my pain, hiding my scars and bruises, hiding my visits to check for STDs or pregnancy tests, hiding from everyone including myself that I was highly damaged or a prostitute.

I was living a double life – a life where I blocked out as much as possible of the routine violence and hate I endured.

I survived by not knowing – but now I want to know, I want what I lost and was stolen to be part of me again.

I want to see my youth, I want to see her eyes beyond the deadness – and into her mountains of rage, her hidden sense of terror, and see her marvellous will to not be destroyed.

I want to greet my youth – I want to praise her to all who can hear, I want to rewards her with books, music and sports, I want her and I to be able to go beyond screaming and to have genuine grief.

I would give her a medal if she could accept it.

I want to slowly be able to know that time without wanting to turn away.