How Come You Ain’t Dead?

My past is fragmented, my past is made of holes.

I touch the many years of being prostituted, and find only an open-mouthed silent grief.

I know prostitution has rip away my adolescent, made my twenties into a grave.

I am now into my 50’s, and have finally learnt to accept their will always large parts of my own existence I can never know or understand.

What hurts is that the good parts of my past have been wiped out too, I can pretend that I remember when surround by folks who were there.

But remembering is a performance, and all too often I trip up on the familiar details.

I want to design a brain that makes the hell of prostitution small, leaving enough to know it was bad, but not interfering with the day-to-day – leaving space for the good memories.

But that is not reality, that is a dream.

Instead, my brain hold onto the horror, the sense of being empty and lost, the physical pain that was the world of prostitution.

It is not in clear memories – not logical stories to hold and speak out, not in logical time and space.

I remember many rapes as a single rape.

I see no faces on the punters only a void as endless rapes, endless smashing up my body and mind.

I remember as my body has no escape – no part of body was not polluted by punters.

My ears had sperm planted into them, were hit when I did undress quite enough.

My head was always in pain as it tried to block all reality.

My mouth and throat forgot to eat as the taste of hate drown me.

My eyes refuse to make contact with any punters. To be seen, would be like killing myself.

My arm and hands perform whatever the punter demanded, as my robot heart played lies that I would be fine.

My stomach was sick, but learn to hold it in – knowing it would just make the punter laugh or go harder.

My legs and feet were useless – I could not run, I could kick him in the balls – I just perform when waiting to be gone.

My cunt carries all his hate, his violence – it was the place were my right to be fully human was buried.

That is a short version of what it was to be prostituted. Short version of body memories, short version of living inside complex trauma.

I write this blog, inside that pain, grief and confusion.

That is why I so pleased that some of you have sent me donations, it shows deep respect. Please continue to do so and ask around or others to donate.

Now to explain the title of the blog – it is a constant refrain said to many exited folks, especially exited women with fragmented memories who now are strong abolitionists.

If it was as bad as you claim – how come you ain’t dead.

This is a refrain that is used to silenced us, implying we are exaggerating or just plain old liars.

This refrain can on occasions come a place of deep ignorance, then with care it can spoken to and if heard, education can bring change.

An education to say the prostituted are tortured, are raped on industrial scale, are made sub-humans – but somehow, not all of the prostituted died.

Those of us who have exited are living proof of this – and our testimonies must be heard, and not lessen or see as rarities.

But many who say – why ain’t you dead yet? – do not do it from a place of ignorance, but from a place of wanting to control us and silenced the multiple voices of the exited.

It said by the sex trade lobby – which is mainly sex trade profiteers, punters, and their allies in the media and academia.

It is not an innocent or naive question when by said by the sex trade – it is a statement of fury that we dare to be alive and to remember.

For to keep the sex trade going, it is vital that the prostituted have no authentic voices just the voices of being controlled and owned.

To keep the sex trade going, it is vital that the prostituted are made to forget their own realities.

To keep the sex trade going, it is vital to allow the majority of the prostituted to disappeared, to fall into silence or to be dead – so there is a constant of fresh goods to control and owned.

The exited are not meant to exist, especially if they speak their own minds, especially if they speak to torture, rape and constant fear of death.

We are meant to be dead – so there be a complete silence about the conditions for the prostituted.

Our existence is a constant threat to status quo of the sex trade – for by remembering, we are carries of deep truths.

We speak out truth to power, and shake the roots of all the sex trade

Our voices once finding their authentic truths cannot ever forget – even as our memories are fragmented.

In remembering, we must fight for justice, for freedom and full humanity for all the prostituted – for all prostituted are connected by oppression and hate.

In remembering, we lose our individual stories and find connections with other exited folks – whether from the street, strippers, from brothels, escorts etc – we all have endless violence inside our minds and bodies.

No wonder the sex trade lobby hates us, and wishes we were dead – for we never one voice, we are the multiple voices from every continent and we connect to the oppressed prostituted in the past.

This blog is very personal, but it also calling for the revolution of the exited to be made real.

We are not dead – we are alive, wanting freedom and justice.