Jeff

You weren't really a prostitute. You were fleeing from a bitter home situation. You acquired the bitterness of being a street child who was making money for a pimp who probably became wealthy from it. You were being used by the wealthy and powerful to satisfy their greed, their lust and need for pleasure. They injured you. They made you injure other boys. They set you up to do stuff you otherwise would not have chosen to do. They certainly didn't have your best interests at heart. That is what you feel.

Puffer

Added later:

Yes I'm trying to "mess with your mind about this".

I'm not trying to tell a lie about this or change what we perceive as reality. We were all told wrong things about who we were as children or youths. These things became deeply imbedded in our minds. We came to believe these lies. But they are nevertheless false. Our healing has to do with outgrowing those concepts we were unfortunately led to believe. It takes work and repetition. We have to be told these things by others, often by a therapist who can tell us while watching us to make sure we don't over-react. We often repeat the same things in our present lives which were destructive to us in the past. We can change. We can live new lives.

Jeff, I have found that you are a caring, sensitive, intelligent person. You have a gift of writing that could make you famous if you were able to use it appropriately. You cared deeply even about those you were compelled to abuse. That's why you remembered their identities enough to be aware that they were different persons. That proves you cared. The fact that you feel deep remorse now shows that you cared and that you are not really that person you seemed to be then.

Yes Jeff,

I would like to agree with Puffer. You were not a prostitute; you were a child sex trafficking victim, and now you are sex trafficking survivor.

Cant

I'm so glad you understand Jeff, and that this conversation hasn't caused you undue pain (or at least hasn't caused unnecessary pain - your metaphor of removing burned skin is very apt). I would never want to say something that triggered or "reversed" any of the people here who are working so hard at recovery, and was mortified by the thought.

And to build off Puffer's point - the "omega victims" were doomed regardless, some "alpha victim" or another would have had to do it. But by your soulful remorse, your wondering about them, your feelings of pity for their pain and the hellish wrongness of it all.... Jeff, you might very well be the only person to have ever shown them or even thought of them with a shred of kindness. They exist only in the shadow world of child trafficking by well-outfitted professional torturers, and it may well be the case that their identities and statuses will never be discovered. But the one and only thing that is definitely known to anchor them to basic humanity, the only individual to feel any compassion or concern for them at all, the sole act of validation of their inner worth as human beings - comes from YOU, Jeff. They had everything taken from them, by people who cared nothing for them and probably laughed and drooled at every instant.

Only within you, in all of this world, is their humanity respected, and wished to have been protected. Only you and no one else can envision them and say "This was WRONG and THEY DESERVED BETTER!" You are the guardian of their sole link to human normalcy and justice, even if it's just an emotional wish for justice.

That's got to count for something, right?

Matt

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