Layers and Levels

I did an interview last week. On my life, sex trafficking, the links between pornography and the trafficking industry, how uneducated our world is on it especially men and what more needs to be done to tackle this monumental issue. I went through a stage where I was regularly doing interviews, sharing my story and writing about it. But as I started talking I realized how long it had been since I last spoke about any of it. I finished the interview and sat in my little office at work staring at the wall. Quite literally. Something strange always happens when I speak or write about my life in any capacity. It’s the easiest and most natural thing to do in the moment, BUT as soon as I’m finished I move into this hollow, dark and desolate place. Transported back into memories I’ve spent the last decade avoiding and coming face to face with the darkness I spent so long trying to overcome. As I sit at my desk I look around at all the photo’s on the wall. The many memories which have been made since that time. Years of normal have most  definitely replaced the abnormal and yet there’s always this piece which sits non-returnable. 

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I know in this moment I need to pick up the phone and call my people. I know in this moment I sit in a choice, ever so slightly pushing the thin weak boundary between reality and moving into a state of incapacity. Feelings of fear, doubt, rejection and dread knock on the door, am I willing to let them in? Prepared for the consequences if I do? My phone rings multiple times but it’s distant and suddenly it becomes a whole lot harder to muster up any energy or control to keep myself grounded. My phone keeps ringing – background noise. I’m no longer avoiding, merely circumventing. I stare hard. The photo’s are keeping me grounded, I look at each one remembering exactly what I felt in that moment and the feelings of happiness surrounding  them. 

My smile fades as I sober back into reality. The darkness continues to grapple for control. I wonder why this is so hard? I question why it is sometimes easier to give into the tough than go into battle for the right? Without any restraint I could allow myself in this moment to sit with the darkness. To be engulfed with heaviness. To be overtaken by the past. It’s easy. It requires no effort. It glides in, settles down and silently controls. To fight for the light on the other hand is the complete opposite. It’s painful, a struggle. It means using every ounce of fight I have left in me. And even once I grab hold of it, it doesn’t seamlessly settle. No, it’s like battling a bed sheet that’s too small to cover the mattress. Tie one side down and you have to pounce on the other before it retreats back into a heap of uselessness. Why is that? It’s so much harder to physically make a place dark than make it light. Light seeps in through the gaps, overtakes the darkness at every cost. It would win hands down each time. Yet take out the physical and the darkness wins over and over again. We have to battle so much harder for the light to enter and  remain than for the darkness to penetrate and stay. 

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For a moment I’m Switzerland. Neutral. Unengaged. I don’t allow the darkness or the light in. I think back through some of the questions. My answers. How did you end up in that world and how easy was it to fall into it? It was too easy. Scarily easy. Took no effort whatsoever from my part. Be broken enough, try hard enough to find your identity in the wrong place and life has your back. Sets you up. Completely. But how did I end up there? How does anyone end up  anywhere? Choices? Yes. Decisions? A series of events, as one unfolds the next is prepared. 

I stare at my computer. The couch. A little basketball hoop is mounted on the wall. A blanket drapes and the little fridge buzzes. Each item is attached with a memory. A shopping trip, an idea, a game, reminiscence. I smile. Each layer creates a level and suddenly I’m surrounded by everything. Good, bad, ugly. Tough and worth. I’m hit by a complete moment of realization of how incredibly crazy it all is. I’m at work. Sat in my office in Virginia Beach in America. A country that less than 5 years ago I’d never even visited. My husband is deployed, living in a different country 4000 miles away. Each level is comprised of so many layers. It makes us who we are. Determines how we think. Act. Respond. React. My interview took me back into a level that has more layers than most of the rest of my life put together. As I navigate through some of those layers naturally emotions, thoughts and memories emerge. It happens for all of us in some way. 

The decision still stares me in the face. Dark or light? Is it really a choice or is it merely a matter of time until one engulfs the other. I decide it’s definitely a choice. I’ve given in to darkness too many times to know the places I end up in aren’t good ones. Far from it. And even though it may seem easier in the moment, climbing back up out of those pits will always be more grueling than fighting for the light to prevail in this moment. I feel tired. Exhausted. It’s been a tough few months in more ways than one. But that just seems to be life. It’s never really been easy. There’s been incredible moments. Highs and mountaintops. But no one reaches those without first encountering the lows and stumbling through the valleys. It continues to be a journey. A journey of layers and levels, choices and decisions. There’s moments we get it right and more moments where we don’t. Life is unpredictable, unexpected and a lot of the time  unanticipated. 

The decision is so simple. Definitely not easy but certainly simple. Yet there’s something about the darkness which pulls. It’s not the ease of it, it goes deeper than that. For a moment I focus on my past. What were some of the toughest things you experienced? That was a hard question to answer. The list is too extensive, the years too long. Some of the inhumane acts I was involved in too much to put into words, the fear of rejection and judgement ring harshly if they were ever spoken out loud. I decide to stick with the safe answers. I explain the warehouses, the large studios with camera’s and lights, being tied up and gang raped, all filmed. Being held down beforehand and forcibly injected with heroine so that I would lose all control of my body and they could do anything and everything that needed to be done to it. I talked about it in the interview but no feelings were attached. Now I’m there. I can feel. It hurts but more than that is anger. At myself, who I am. My weakness. This is why the darkness pulls. Because it’s so much easier to admit defeat than have to fight to be something more. It’s simpler to sit in nonexistence than try to be somebody on a daily basis. It’s easier to believe the lies than swallow the truth. To step away from darkness means facing into the light. And light reveals. It reveals the layers and the levels. It indicates the work still needed, the healing that hasn’t yet taken place and the shortcomings we’re still giving into. 

Light reveals and darkness conceals. In a world full of hurt and pain, abuse and torment why wouldn’t we want to conceal? It seems so much easier. And maybe sometimes for a moment it is. But that’s all it is. A moment. While it might conceal, it doesn’t deal. And it’s not until we start dealing with it that the pain starts to fade and the hurt begins to dim.

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I pick up my phone and call my people. I walk out of the office and surround myself with friends. The heaviness begins to evaporate, the darkness slowly retreating from its position of power and threat. The light begins to seep in through the cracks. I’m not fixed. Far from it. But  with each choice to turn my back on darkness a layer is formed, cemented in and I know one day I will look back and see new levels take me places I never thought I’d get to. It’s never easy. I don’t think it ever will be. But I’d like to believe it’s worth it.