How it feels for a survivor to hear the word „sex work“
Every time someone says that sex work is empowering,
or repeats the words sex work is work like a mantra,
a small shiver runs down my spine
and a knife is being stabbed where it hurts the most.
Not the kind of shiver that belongs to pleasure or warmth
but the cold, thin ripple that comes when an old door inside you creaks open.
I think of the places I’ve tried to seal shut.
Of the moments I almost managed to forget,
until a phrase in a stranger’s mouth brings them back,
slow and sharp, like glass rising through the soil after a long winter.
I feel as if they turn away from my pain,
laugh at it,
sell it back to the world as their fight.
They take the language of my wounds
and stitch it into their banners,
bright and clean, to make men happy,
as if it were never soaked through with shame,
as if it had never left a taste in my mouth I can’t spit out.
You all make me sick.
At that point in my life, things were far from glamorous. I lived with my girlfriend in a tiny one-room apartment, barely managing to scrape together enough for our next meal. Her alcohol and drug use ate up whatever savings we had, leaving us constantly on edge.
The arguments that erupted between us, the nights when I had to carry her home because she was completely out of it, the moments when she threw things at me in desperation when she was in withdrawal or we ran out of money again. Being trapped in a tiny bathroom, surrounded by clutter from every side. Dirt so old on the walls, no idea how it got there. That cramped space was where I remembered what it meant to hold on, to keep going even when hope felt out of reach. How we reconciled in the ruins of her drunken nights and talked about the wounds inflicted on us by the light of a bottle stuck in a beer glass. I remember it clearly because they dug deep. I loved her deeply, despite everything. And I would have done anything to make her happy again. Anything to give us the life I thought we both deserved.
And how she yelled at me to bring in more money… Whatever, we just need more money now.
I don’t care about it. We need it now.
It in exact that moment in that bathroom I took the decision to do it again. The first time was much earlier, so early that I don’t wanna have to think about it once again. For now.
I remember that I felt like a puppet jerked along by tangled strings, my body moving without permission, caught somewhere between numbness and almost forgotten habit. Exhaustion not just physical; it seeped into my bones, dulling every edge until nothing felt sharp anymore not pain, not hope, not even fear.
I was drifting through a fog where the future was invisible and present and past too heavy to carry. There was no bravery in it, no grand moment of decision just the grim reality of needing to keep moving because stopping meant facing a silence I wasn’t ready for.
Just pain.
Standing on some street corner, hoping not to be seen, waiting with that disgusting feeling in your stomach like a pig on the slaughterhouse. I still have that feeling and wake up from it in the middle of the night.
I remember all the endless discussions with the men.
No, I won’t do that.
But why not?
My heart beating so fast that sometimes I thought I would never wake up. Hands on my neck without asking. Feet on my face. It didn’t feel empowering at all.
Constantly afraid of not surviving the next few hours. Everyone talks about how women feel when they meet a man on the street at night. But how are we supposed to feel?
Tried to think beyond the walls closing in
imagining her smile like a distant light, flickering just out of reach.
The thought of bringing home a stack of bills,
like a scene playing behind glass,
detached and blurry, almost unreal.
Held onto that image,
but feels like watching someone else’s life
memory slipping through fog again,
too far away to grasp, too faint to believe.
And even then, weight pulls back,
dragging me under,
reminding me where I am.
Some say, “Maybe it’s because you’ve had trauma before?” as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. As if it wasn’t the same for every prostitute out there. Even every woman out there.
I brought money home.
Just enough to get us through next week. But don’t forget that I was there. Let me f*ck*ng talk about it.
I hope she still thinks about that sometimes when she calls me bigot with her new friends because I say sex work isn’t work.