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The Moments That Matter

How Living an Authentic Life Started by Choosing Myself

By Corinne NicholsonPublished 2 years ago 9 min read
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The Moments That Matter
Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

I sat at the glass kitchen table crushing my cocaine with the bottom of a mug against the slick dining surface, making sure not to pierce the bag. I couldn’t believe I had gotten here. Breaking all my own rules. I had escorted several years in my twenties, but I always worked sober, and I always made sure it wasn’t my main gig. But here I was, using coke to wake me up between calls, after drinking too much wine with my last client. This wasn’t fun, I was depressed, and simply trying to make things bearable.

After an 18 month stint houseless, vagabonding in Toronto working for a mid-level incall agency, in mediocre hotels, with an even less than stellar clientèle, I had run myself down. I experienced a call that bordered on rape, my best friend had to get an abortion after a client stealthing her, and all around this reality felt like a hell hole that needed to be left. I was desperate for change, so I had made my way back home to Montreal from Toronto, crashing at a friend’s place for free for the month. I was out of funds and these were going to be my last few weeks of work to build a financial cushion to start my new life.

It had all begun three years ago, after an arduous breakup, escorting showed up in my line of sight like a long lost love, just waiting to save me. “Come, elope with me, let’s run away from here, forget about all of that.” It beckoned me, taunting me with the memories of the time I spent working high end clients in New York City at the tender age of 21. I didn’t know if I had it in me now at 28 to start again, but I had no interest in dating, a high libido, and an even higher penchant for expensive booze-soaked meals. Mostly though I wanted to escape my grief.

Truly my addiction was not for drugs or booze, or even the money, but how validated I felt by the work. Thanks to the fawning trauma coping mechanism I picked up as a kid, I was excellent at this work. I had been the good eldest daughter, self-sacrificing for the family, and I played the good girl part just as well today. You efface your needs and desires long enough for others, you don’t even feel them anymore, living to help and please comes so easily.

I sniffed the cocaine, the cocaine was so much better in Montreal than Toronto, or maybe I just had better plugs here, more criminal friends. Cocaine levelled out the alcohol which I was so sensitive to, eliminated my hunger cues making it easier to work long hours, and made me feel calm and focused. I am also convinced cocaine numbs the soul; it is very self-involved, ritualistic, people fall in love with doing the cocaine, more than the cocaine itself. Tack tack tack tack tack, the knocking of the card on the table, the sound of the lines being made, the sweep across the surface to rally the crumbs, the cold feeling of a key or a rolled up post-it against your nostril, the sound of your own nasal aspiration, the one you’ve heard in movies so many times...

I hated drinking on the job, I hated not feeling lucid, in control. I needed to feel on top of things, like nothing would happen to me, if I only kept my wits about me. It always felt like “knowing” was the key to safety, and so I was always in anticipation, looking out for lies and danger. Stay sharp, trust your instincts, and don’t trust anybody.

Escorting was killing my soul, it was killing my opportunity to have a personal love life, at least the way I wanted to have one. I always worked the bare minimum of days, then I would ride that cash until I was broke, and then work a little more. Thing is I had met someone, and I couldn’t date and work, it was too hard to compartmentalize that way. I don’t think my clients realized they were the only ones I fucked. It just didn’t feel right to open myself emotionally to someone when I was out there peddling so much of myself to others, because the work was always so personal to me. It wasn’t all of me, but it was real, and if I was going to be with someone, I just really couldn’t create that separation within myself.

So I chose the work, because I needed the money. In the past I had chosen the work because I believed in my story that this was meant for me, like a special destiny, the Mother Teresa of sex. I believed in the constructed belief (perhaps true) that I was doing good in the world. Of all things, I felt maternal when I escorted. Watching all these men get naked and bare their desires, their secrets, and their vulnerabilities, while I, the sacred prostitute, made them feel whole again, if only for a moment.

But when you stop believing your own stories, they start to feel like lies, and your sense of self, your identity narratives, they crumble. All of a sudden you feel like you are cheating yourself every time you look in the mirror. What have you become, what is this foolish fantasy you persuaded yourself of? The mind is a powerful and dangerous place, one where you make the rules, and play your own game. What are you creating? What had I created? It was time for a new character, a new game, something wholly me.

When you’re struggling with mental health, getting a job that allows you to make the most money in the least amount of time makes sense. You make your own hours, work as much as you want, dress how you please, and aside from coughing up a majority of your profit, you don’t really have any boss to report to. At least that was the privileged experience I had had, dealing with madams and agency owners, not pimps, not street work. The reality for many is far more gruesome.

So here I was, I had one last call, maybe two and then I would call it a night, but I could tell the whole song and dance was falling apart. I knew the end was near, a fork in the road, with neon signs glaring at me to take a different path. The fact that I no longer had a primary job also meant that I was doing this out of NEED, and that is a bad place to be. This requires an extra layer of mental and emotional fortitude, and maybe I was tired of being strong like that.

When I came back home that night, I took a hot shower, as I always did, a hot hot shower, reclaiming my body, and when I slipped into bed, I started to cry. A bawl really, an uncontrollable almost silent but chest-ripping weep, that felt like I was facing the death of me. I did not want to do this anymore, my soul was calling me. If you keep going down this road the ending will be far from pretty, and your next crossroad will likely be much more painful.

I was supposed to work until the end of the month to set myself up financially, but I just couldn’t. Inside of me, it was a dead stop no, right now, it ends. This inner truth suffocated me, but I didn’t know if I could survive ignoring it. I picked up my phone, and wrote up a message to my parents, asking for help, to start fresh. My parents knew about my earlier escorting days and had been so understanding then, maybe oddly so; but now I was 31, and I had to present to them this desperate mess I had become. I was scared and ashamed.

After that breakup years prior, I only escorted a little bit at first. I had actually been pouring myself into restaurant work, and did this until I burnt out, admitted to the hospital for vomiting blood. I asked my father for help then, just for a month for a couple of bills. I had to miss work while I healed, and would also take an income hit as I quit one of my jobs, so I needed a little extra cash, but he told me I was old enough to figure it out on my own. Not even two months later I lost my apartment to gentrification, and all of these chaotic events led to my decision to break my first rule: to never escort as my main source of income.

Fast forward to now, I couldn’t believe I was asking for his support again, but it was a desperate cry, not just for financial help, but from my inner child that had always wanted to be prioritized. The child that had had to grow up too fast, the child that played therapist and mediator, and mother, to her parents and siblings. That child was saying, “Will you care for me now? Is this enough pain? Is this worthy of your care, of your love?” Maybe I had manifested an opportunity for my parents to step up to the plate, the plate where my idea of parenthood lived.

I was so petrified of the answer, the potential rejection, but if they said no, I would tough the month out somehow, and adjust my relationship to them accordingly. Writing that request though was like claiming myself. This would be the start of a new chapter, and this filled me with hope. It was my answer to the universe saying, yes, I hear you; it was an answer to myself, saying, yes, I see you. In that moment I chose my path in the fork in the road, I chose that I would no longer self-destroy, I chose that my desires and needs mattered. Maybe I couldn’t hear them when they whispered or called, but I was certainly hearing this scream of theirs. I had ignored these screams before, to be “strong”, but now I listened, and it was the strongest thing I could ever do.

coping
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About the Creator

Corinne Nicholson

I write from experience on love, wellness, and magic. I wear the hats of mother, intuitive, creative, coach, and energy worker. I am a lover of naps, bodies of water, and sensorial pleasures. Stay weird, be kind. Love is a verb.

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