Today I have gone to a very dark place. Yesterday I was so tired from only getting a few hours sleep before my flight that I didn’t really have the ability to process what had happened.
I’m trying not to get caught in an infinite loop of self-destructive and self-hating thoughts, but it’s really hard. You would think that, as a sex worker, I would have some understanding and actually expect my clients to lie to me, wouldn’t you? I am, after all, selling a fantasy, not the truth. I must be the world’s most fucking gullible sex worker. I broke Rule Number One in the sex worker handbook:
Don’t Get Romantically Involved With A Client
And even though I knew it was fucked-up from the get-go to be interested in this guy because he’s a fucking client and because it was so unhealthily intense, I told myself that this time it would be different. This time it would be for real. This was it. This guy would love and understand me. We’d walk off into the sunset together. Even though I knew some things didn’t add up, even though I even found myself wondering “Is he just telling me what I want to hear?”, I refused to listen.
In a way, I feel violated, and exposed. I opened up to this guy because he read me so well, and told me exactly what I needed to hear to open up. I told him far too much about myself. He knew I was really vulnerable, and exploited that. I don’t know why it should still surprise me that there are people out there like this, but it does. I can’t imagine actively exploiting somebody’s else’s obvious weaknesses for my own selfish gain. This is just completely unbelievable, unimaginable behaviour.
I’ve been trying to make myself feel better by telling myself that he is, at the end of the day, the real loser in this situation. He’s a sociopath, and sociopaths have no conscience, and no ability to empathize with anybody. What an impoverished existence he must lead. How must it be to never be able to truly connect with people, or love? But thinking this doesn’t really help me because he can’t miss what he has never known, or never will know. I want him to suffer for what he did to me, and what he’s no doubt done to countless other women.
I hate myself for being so stupid, and it’s this gullibility which has left me feeling the most desperate today. I fucking know I’m a sex and love addict, and that I have horrible boundaries, but I still make the same mistakes over and over again. What good is it to attend Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings, and the local zen centre, if I fall at the first hurdle? I feel that I will never get better because I can’t trust myself to fucking remember (just fucking remember!) that I have a serious problem, and that I need help.
I am so alone, and I can’t stand being this way anymore. How can I stop myself from feeling this gut-wrenching void and emptiness inside? I’m scared I’ll never be able to.
This episode has also shown me that I need to get the hell out of the sex industry. The friend I’m visiting is scared for my physical safety, but, honestly, it’s my emotional safety that’s more in danger. Most of the men who use my services are broken in some way, and I just don’t want to be around that. I don’t want to be anywhere near their sickness. I want to meet happy, healthy people or at least people who are working on themselves so they can be that way.
I have painted myself into a corner, though. With so many pets, it would be impossible for me to find a cheaper place to stay, so most of my money goes on rent. My landlady is also cool with my having so many pets, and I would never find somebody like that again. I literally have to do erotic massage to survive and to find a way to save money so I have a little more financial stability. The only solution here would be to get rid of some of my pets, but I can’t do that. They’re like family. But I can’t keep on living the way I’m doing.
I took a train today for the first time in ages since there is not really a rail service where I live currently. I had the passing thought that I could throw myself on the tracks when the train arrived Anna Karenina-style. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live like this this either.