| A medical professional, foodie, world traveller, lover of people and passionate fighter for social justice. I fight against injustice; I fight for life; I fight for equality, sometimes in the trenches, and sometimes with my words, but always with all my heart. She can be contacted at lynsay.m.lewis@gmail.com. |
FEBRUARY 23 — Have you ever met a prostitute? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. Maybe you didn’t know you had; maybe you did.
Chances are, whether or not you have come face to face with one, you think you have an idea of her life and her choices.
I have met many women in the sex trade. Though, to me, none of them were prostitutes. They were women; mothers, sisters, friends and children. They all have names and stories.
At first glance it is easy to be disgusted by them. To imagine what they do for a living. That they sell their bodies to men who use them for a minute and then leave.
And then one grabs your hand and whispers softly, “Sister, can you help me?” She has AIDS. She has children. She has multiple STDs. She is living in the sewer. She isn’t eating much.
You quickly realize the reality, that what she does for a “living” is only about survival, keeping her kids alive, and perhaps even herself to a small extent, for truly she isn’t living.
At what age she lost the life from her eyes is unknown. For some they were young girls, for others they were widowed or abandoned by husbands and family.
She exists only, she does not truly live. To live to her means today she is breathing and her heart is still beating, beyond that she can’t even comprehend anymore what life is like.
There are no Pretty Woman stories in the slums and sewers. Most die here, them and their children.
It is here where I have seen tiny children burnt from falls into fires because mom was “working” and no one was watching.
My stomach rolls and my first reaction is anger and disgust. Until I see the three other children clinging to her skirts… four children under four, and if she has no money to feed them, they all die.
So the risk is taken, a baby left on her own for a few minutes so that they don’t all starve. The consequence a traumatic burn which will leave behind permanent bodily scars and a memory burned in all of them of the horrors they have endured.
She works because she has no choice. We would all like to say she could do something else, anything, but the reality is, she probably cannot.
She has no skills, she can’t even read or write. The unemployment rate is at least 50 per cent, probably more. She truly has no choice. She is a slave to the circumstance and cruelty of a harsh world.
She hates herself, and contemplates suicide often. She abuses alcohol and drugs when she has the opportunity so that for a while it numbs the pain. She is despised by everyone.
No one welcomes her into their homes. She doesn’t even know if she deserves to live outside the slums anymore, because surely someone like her doesn’t deserve a better life.
Sometimes she seems cold and unfeeling about the needs of her children. Indeed so often they feel like a burden, the result of her trade, an unintended consequence of trying to feed her other children.
Until they get burned in the fire, and you see her heart, laid out before you, and the pain that permeates her eyes.
Until you see the pain as she sobs in your arms when she loses her son, one of her only hopes of ever getting out of this life.
Until you watch her weep with news of another pregnancy which brings no joy, only more fear. Until you watch her brush off the tears, harden her face, and get up and walk back, head down and dejected, to where she came, willing to endure it while she breathes for the sake of her children.
Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t met a prostitute. But if you have traveled at all, and even if you haven’t, chances are you have passed one on the street. Perhaps you have avoided looking at her, and avoided especially looking in her eyes.
What I’m asking of you today is that next time you see her, you do not pass her by. You may or may not be the person who can step into her life and help her get on her feet, often there are extensive complicated reasons why she is in this profession which cannot just be fixed by you coming to the rescue.
Often, for whatever reasons, you are also not the one who can physically get involved in her life. But there are people who can. There are groups who help people like her.
Groups who have social, mental, medical and financial services to help her. Groups who aren’t afraid to go into the hell she is in and tell her she still has worth, that she is not despised, that she is valuable to the world.
Find those groups in your area. Some of them have religious affiliations, some do not, but for her and her children, find them and help them help her.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
