I’ve reached a point in my life where I no longer want to hide who I am, where I no longer want to be a participant of my own misery. And that in and of itself is hard to admit, knowing that you suppressed yourself and your own happiness for so long. And for what? To fit in. To not want to be considered weird or different. To not upset the status quo. To make other people happy. All of the above, and then some.
I could say that it’s because I’m in my 40s now and just don’t care anymore what people think of me, but that would be a lie. I’m an attention whore, clearly. Because why else would I be doing the work that I do?
I’ve been doing sex work for a couple years now, quite successfully I might add. I mean, I’m not out here making six figures or anything, but I do find joy in this work. And for someone who has been sad for most of her life due to circumstances beyond her control, that means more to me than any dollar sign ever could.
Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself.
D.H. Lawrence
I’ve been trying to take up more space, something I would rarely ever allow myself to do growing up. That meant being seen, and that felt too vulnerable. Instead I have made my circle of people smaller, only valuing feedback from a handful of those I can genuinely trust. Those people are few and far between these days. I have been burned before both literally and figuratively by people who I thought had my best interests at heart, only to come to find that they were in it for themselves all along.
It took me a long time to open my heart back up. I don’t want to close it again. It made me a shell of who I am, and after a while I began to resent the person I was becoming. I am sweet. I am kind. I mess up sometimes. I try my best to make amends. I love fully, and sometimes that means I get my heart broken. That is the risk we must take, one that I will keep doing until I find what it is I’m looking for.
I don’t know if I will ever get to a place where I can call myself truly happy. I try, but at the end of the day tears still well up in my eyes about all that has happened and all that might never be. There is a loneliness in my heart that I can’t seem to shake no matter what I do. I am hoping that maybe one day I can fill it with something beautiful. For now all I can do is to keep creating, to keep dancing, and to keep that fire alive in my heart.
Mad love, Jenna
