Confessions of a Former Sex Slave
Even in the sex industry there is a caste system and I was one of the untouchables for everyone except my abusers
I get a little jealous of the sex workers that write on Substack, Medium, or other platforms because they are doing it because they want to and are currently making enough money to live on, and I am not. A lot of women who do sex work do so because at some point in their lives, it was the only way they had to survive. Now, though, many appear relatively happy with their careers, often working in places around the world that are more friendly towards sex workers than the United States of America.
I have so many feelings about it because I know I am nothing like them, despite having been forced into sexual servitude since I was a baby. I am not the same as these women because they are or were sex workers, but I was merely a slave. Sex workers don’t respect me as a peer because I was trafficked, as if that makes me worth less than nothing. Considering they are well aware of societal attitudes towards sex workers, it sucks that I’m not seen as an equal.
Even in this world there are levels, or castes, and slaves are the lowest of the low. We are the ones that make the sex industry look bad, and therefore we are a threat to women who engage in sex work voluntarily. I don’t have an OnlyFans, LoyalFans, or whatever the fuck else, because that’s not how things were done when I was forced into porn and prostitution.
Honestly, I’ve considered signing up because I’m truly desperate to make money and apparently my body is the only way to make money. The problem is, I’m not even good slave material anymore because I am fat. Obese if you ask my doctor. She keeps insisting I must have diabetes and they just haven’t picked up on it yet and so she sends me for blood tests every few months because she just can’t wait to diagnose me with diabetes. It will be her pleasure. Unfortuantely for my doctor, there has so far been zero evidence of diabetes.
Sometimes I feel like I want to try harder to lose the weight, but seeing as it’s not just a bad diet of cheap food and the fact that I don’t do any formal exercise (I do intentionally walk every day but it’s not a power walk, it’s just waddling around to keep my body moving). I can’t afford a gym membership, but I do thing that gardening in 100 degree heat should count as exercise.
It’s not just about food, or exercise, it’s also about the fact that I live with chronic illness. After having my body broken and bruised for all those years, and now that the sins of my youth have caught up with me, I’m always in pain and usually tired. I refuse to just quit moving, though, and so I get up and walk around even if it’s just out of spite or a refusal to give up. Trauma also keeps me fat, and that’s not an excuse it’s just a fact.
To be perfectly honest I want nothing to do with the sex industry and the fact that I’m now invisible rather than considered beautiful makes it easy to keep away from. I’m not a BBW (big beautiful woman), I’m just an UMAFW (ugly middle aged fat woman, and yes, I made this one up, but BBW is a thing). I’m not a MILF (mom I’d like to fuck), which is very much fine by me as I don’t have teenage boys crushing on me. My body is just not cut out for prostitution or porn anymore, and I’m I have mixed feelings about it.
I do not want to work in the sex industry. It was a life of slavery and abuse, and I have no interest whatsoever in going back. The problem is that my body seems to be the only thing of value I have to pimp out in order for this capitalistic society to see me as someone with any value whatsoever, and the merchandise has been on the reduced rack for years. Nobody is buying, even at 90% off because I’m broken and battered.
St. Peter, when faced with the death of Jesus, decided the best thing to do was return to the life he had before Jesus came along, and to go fishing. The others said that they would go with him, and yet they caught nothing. They were not able to do the thing they had been good at before Jesus showed up, because that’s not who they were anymore.
Jesus met these men on the seashore after a futile night on the water and told them to cast their nets. The men thought it a crazy request but they did it anyway and the net was full of fish. Jesus wanted to continue the work he had begun in the disciples and Peter went from a coarse fisherman to the head figure of Christianity, the rock upon which Jesus built the church.
There is no going back, and even if I were to voluntarily engage in sex work I’d still be enslaved because that’s not what Jesus has called me to do. I don’t know why I’m not able to make enough money to get by, and it frustrates me, but, as the song says:
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.
I doubt that this was the only time Peter seriously thought about going back to fishing, because life wasn’t easy for him as a committed follower of Jesus either. The thought would have crossed his mind every time something went wrong, just like the idea that I should just get on OnlyFans or go sleep with random strangers for money comes up to me from time to time. I can’t help that the thoughts come, but I can choose what I do with them.
While I wish I were still considered beautiful (I never felt that way about myself) and skinny, there are days when I am thankful I’m not because I think I would go from the thoughts crossing my mind to actually being tempted to go back, and so in some ways being fat and ugly are a gift.
I have tried to feel better about myself by putting in the effort to wear clothes that I actually like rather than just finding a boring cotton dress at the thrift store and wearing it because it was cheap and I am tired. I’ve started wearing my wigs far more often, and even use a little makeup these days.
It’s not like I want to be the person I was before I began to heal, but I do want to be able to figure out how to get by and as someone with no value to the capitalists I don’t know what else to do. Right now I am unable to do basic things like be a door greeter at Walmart even if they let me sit, because my Dissociative Identity Disorder isn’t yet to the point where I’d be able to manage it well enough to work.
Hell I don’t even get disability, because I’m not even worth being acknowledged in that way, it seems. I feel like being a sex slave has branded me forever.
On the night in which Judas betrayed him and he was arrested and went into the suffering of the Passion, Jesus took bread, and wine, and gave of himself.
Yesterday when I was in church kneeling right before communion with a lot on my mind, Jesus came, knelt next to me and said:
“This is my broken, battered, and bruised body, given for you.”
He was assuring me he knew what it was like to suffer extreme physical pain, and the toll it takes on the body, and he reminded me that he has given his own body for me to consume so that it enters my body and there is always healing in that.
I do not know how I am going to make ends meet, and this essay isn’t inspiration porn where I suddenly manifest a million dollars or anything like that (I do NOT want a million dollars anyway), and I don’t know why things have to be so hard in that regard, but I am healing and this is why, despite all that I have been through, I am a Christian.