Me and Trauma

I wish to write how bad my PTSD is at the moment, well for the last few weeks.

I write this to show why non-Survivors of the sex trade need to fight so hard to destroy this industry.

To show how long-term the effects of torture and rape given the name of prostitution is.

What for a john is a quick fuck, or “long” girlfriend relationship, or just a playing out of some stupid film or magazine or computer porn on a real body.

What is nothing to that john, is poisoning me every day.

What the profiteers of prostitution just sell in bulk, not knowing faces, forgetting that prostitutes are humans, not caring about mental and physical injuries or damage to what is just goods.

What is nothing to those profiteers, is murdering me every day.

I left ages ago, and the farther I get away from that world, the more my mind, body and most powerfully my soul knows what I was living inside.

PTSD is seeing, knowing and feeling the true horror of what to survive you had to blank out.

I know my truth, but words cannot describe my gut sickness, my terror that goes into every cell of my body.

It is like my mouth is wide open with a scream from the bottom of my stomach, but no noise come out of my throat.

But Christ, I am screaming and screaming until I am sick.

My eyes keep misting up, but I cannot cry.

I just keep cleaning my glasses thinking there is something wrong with my eyesight, only I can’t see coz my mind is occupy dealing with knowing hell.

I want to weep and weep, I think I kind of cry, only no water comes to my eyes.

But I shake from my stomach into my heart, my heart makes a river of grief. It is invisible, but by Christ, it is there.

My mind unblocks memory, showing me things I don’t want to believe, sending me to places I don’t want to know.

But when I accept them, I get a strange kind of peace.

You non-Survivors must know the banality of evil that is named prostitution.

By banality, I means terrible acts of violence, degradation and creating us as sub-humans, became ordinary.

I was so used to being anally raped, that I never took serious injuries as real. I just got used to not sleeping on my back.

I was so used to violence being named as sex, that when I heard or saw other prostituted women or girls being beaten or viciously raped – I could think nothing except at least it not me, knowing it could me at any time.

I was so used to the beatings, that losing consciousness and time was just the way it was.

I was so used to gang-raping, that I made myself imagine that I was Anita in “West Side Story” as my way of making it not exist.

I was so used to oral raping, that for choking is an everyday experience.

That is prostitution.

That is what you must fight and fight to eradicate.

Women like me are extremely strong, but we cannot do it alone.

We lived inside that hell – so fight with and for us.

I believe that Survivors of the sex trade need to have a fuller life than just fighting the sex trade, just being a witness to its evils, just being a voice that others used then leave isolated.

No, if you really think exited prostituted women have a strong and important voice – than prove by your actions.

Prove it by fighting the sex trade on as many levels as you can, and not as a hobby or because it may be fashionable. Fight when you being viciously attacked. Fight even if you lose friends. Fight through the memory and connections it will make in you.

For remember when it hard, that all the time prostituted women and girls are being raped, getting tortured and are murdered. We cannot rest until that is not true.

When listening to voices of exited prostituted women, know that their words is their trauma. Do not abandon them inside that terror.

Do not compare your rape, your domestic violence, your sexual harassment – unless you are prepared to know that is deeply insulting and silencing.

Do say all women are treated like prostitutes – they are not.

Do not assume you know her story, listen first.

Just treat exited prostituted as full human beings, it is the less you can do. After all, the sex trade is designed to make prostitutes sub-humans – so refuse to continue that evil.

To be a real ally, is to see our joys, our passions, know we have people in our lives that we love, we go to films, we can find our own paths in going forward with our lives.

See we want a life where we can never forget that we were prostituted – but there is so much more to us.

I will never be ashamed that I was prostituted – for that was a major part of what made who I am now.

But I will not waste my time with anyone who cannot see beyond that label of prostitute – and think that is all I am.

I will always speak and write out to make real change.

But I will always love films, I will always follow Arsenal, I will always have cats and not worship them, I will always watch TV, I will always love cities, I will always enjoy good food and alcohol – damn it I a fully rounded human,  not just someone who knew hell.

If you want fight for real change, it vital that you see  prostituted women and girls as full humans – even when that is hard.

Give us back our dignity.