After

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. 

When I talk about the fact that I've been raped, the bolder people sometimes ask how it happened. Every once in awhile people will ask how I cope with my past and lead such a normal life today. But no one ever, ever asks what happened after. What were the moments like immediately after. 

For me, the very first time I was raped left a big impact on my life. (Probably because it is one of the few times that I remember every single detail of what happened. Every other time are just blurry memories that remind me of their existence.) The bigger impact on my life is what I did after. Those moments shaped everything I did for the next three years of my life.

Even today I have a hard time escaping those moments because they haunt me every day. 

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't leave. I didn't run. I didn't think. I picked myself up. I accepted what was. I moved on. 

I don't know if what I did makes me strong or weak. I just know it made me.

Tomorrow...

I've been trying to convince myself to go into work for the past... four weeks. Well tomorrow I will. Unfortunately. But I am going to work five to six days a week for the next four months. And then quit. So tomorrow is the beginning of four months of hell. And then I get my freedom/sanity back. Thank God!

Love

Because of my job I know that I am wanted. That I am desirable.

But most days, at the end of the day, I lay in bed wondering...

Will anyone actually love me?

Holy Hell That's Hysterical

Today, I sat down and started looking through which posts are read the most and which are read least. The posts read most are the funny ones. The posts that are serious or sad receive the least views. People prefer humor. I know I do.

It's easier to mask pain and sadness with humor. We're a culture that does not want to deal with anything uncomfortable or painful or serious or taboo or sad or any emotion that is not a happy one. We mask everything with humor. It is easier to laugh at a joke than to sit down and openly discuss the problem. It is a major problem in the US when it comes to rape. We make rape jokes, but we can't discuss it openly to actually solve the problem. So, instead, we just laugh and brush it off like it's nothing. Stripping doesn't even receive the "problem" status. There are so many problems in the world of stripping. Problems that need to be changed, that could be changed, that won't be changed. Because it is a legal profession all over in the US it is not deemed a problem, not like prostitution. Stripping has the same problems that prostitution does, but we refuse to talk about that problem, and we refuse to acknowledge there is a problem with stripping. Stripping is everywhere in today's culture. It covers TV and film and music and bachelor parties. It is shoved in people's faces everyday and desensitizes people to the reality of the profession and the reality of these women's lives. Stripping has become one big joke in and of itself. It does not receive the respect and attention it deserves. For as prevalent a place as it holds in our society it is completely and totally unknown and disrespected. We cover up how uncomfortable or in pain we are with humor. I know I do it far more than I should. 

Laugh at the stripper jokes, they're funny. But the funniest ones are made by strippers because we know the truth behind them. Next time you laugh at a joke made at the expense of a rape survivor, a stripper, a prostitute just think about the reality of that joke and ask yourself is this really funny?

October 1st

The school year is almost done. I have a week and a half left before summer starts. And summer will be almost exactly four months long. In that four months I want to work and make enough money to quit. I am tired of working. I am tired of being a stripper. I'm tired of feeling like shit. I'm tired of feeling less than.

I want to be done October first to save my sanity.

On My Way Home

So I worked my ass off. And then I took a nice little vacation to visit a friend in San Diego. Where I got to sit on the beach, eat junk food, watch movies, and do absolutely NOTHING!!! The only two bad things about my nice five day vacation, or as I like to call it my runaway from reality, was a) I got very seriously sun burnt (hurts like a bitch) and b) passed out twice in the same night giving me a huge bump on the back of my head and a large gash on my forehead. Yeah! Vacation!

Work before I left was absolutely, terrifically, stunningly shitty. The amount of money I made in eight days I should, or at least USED to, have made in two maybe three. So it's terrible. The only comfort I had was I did WAY better than everyone else. Sorry had to be a little snide.

Now as I come home from vacation the fact that I got sun-burnt is usually not that big of an issue for most people. Fortunately for me I don't have a "most" people kind of job. I have a job that pretty much solely relies on the goods meaning my face and body. SO I have this huge gash on my forehead. That'll be fun to explain to everyone. No worries I can dance fine, I just pass the fuck out when I stand up. No big deal. Those incredibly visible tan lines? You don't like those. What??? How to fix this problem. Well I'll be styling my hair in a new and unique way to cover up my gash. As for the tan lines, lets just pray tanning lotion applied just to the boobs, ass, and vagina looks similar to a real tan!

We'll see how this goes.

My short reality runaway was wonderful otherwise. It couldn't have come at a better time. Unfortunately for me I'm sitting in LAX feeling very sad that I have to leave that beautiful, beautiful beach. And so very sad at the fact that I'm on the red eye. At least I've become a pro at these allnighters!

Work

Work is still sucking. Even with the weather being nicer it is still atrocious. So far all I've managed to do is convince all the men I talk to that I am the perfect girl and far too classy to work in a strip club. I can't say I completely disagree with the whole too classy part, but that doesn't change the fact that I do work there.

I need to go in to work tonight... I am so tired though. I'm tired from over exertion, but my whole body is taken over by a feeling of total emptiness. Sometimes I feel like a shell of who I used to be. Sometimes it is far too hard to breath. Something is sitting on my chest and keeps me from ever feeling completely and totally comfortable in my own skin.