May 20, 2013
The following stories were written as part of a POOR Magazine Survivor Skolaz Workshop at the L-Tern project at Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, presented by Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia at POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE and sponsored by The Sex Workers’ Film Fest. Thanks to Laure McElroy, Cyn, and all poverty skolaz who keep it UP no matta WUT!
Laurie Zamora of Colorado
My current struggle and resistance is that sixteen years ago I began a physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally abusive relationship for fifteen years. By the grace of God I finally was able to leave him. It was one hell of a struggle letting this man have control of my life, every which way. I lost my Section 8 housing and started using heroin when I left him, so now I have a habit and no place to live. I am homeless with no income and a habit. That’s when I started being a sex worker. It’s not all peaches and cream. I’ve been through it all.
My crisis experience is being abused for fifteen years. During the first two weeks of our relationship, on Mothers’ Day, he beat me and dragged me out of my girlfriend’s house in front of everyone. Yet I stayed with him all them years, until it got so bad I found myself not wanting to go home to my own place. Then I started fighting back, so I started sleeping with a knife under my pillow: either I was going to kill him or he was going to kill me. So I had to leave him to save my life. I even almost committed suicide.
This crisis feels ugly, rotten, like an empty hole in my stomach.
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Tracy Girón of San Mateo county, SF Richmond, and Fremont
My current struggle is family drama, child visitation rights, being houseless, and new boyfriend drama.
My latest crisis experience started when I told my boyfriend off. I told him that he can’t have double-standards. He wanted me to rent a room in a house with him, and I said no. He had put this idea in his head that I didn’t want to live with him, that I wanted to just get my own place so I could mess around with other guys or do him dirty somehow in my soon-to-be SRO or studio. He didn’t like the fact that I wanted to be independent and have my own spot where I could have my kids sleep over. He acted as if the reason I really wanted my own place was to cheat on him and/or prostitute myself all behind his back. I told him that my past is my past and that I learned my lessons.
I told him that he didn’t trust himself. He had some chick that he likes show up at his job. Knowing she likes him, how the f*** is it o.k. for him to have seen and hung out with her in person, and to then get mad at me when he saw me speaking to my ex-boyfriend. My ex and I were only talking about his baby on the way and family, and how he and I didn’t work out. I even bragged about my new boyfriend to my ex-boyfriend and claimed that the new man goes to church with me and looks out for me, not like him (the ex). My boyfriend saw us talking and thought that the ex and I had been messing around, that that must be why he kept showing up to the resource center—to meet me.
My boyfriend freaked out for nothing. How am I the guilty one, when his current temptation came by his job so he could complain to her about me? I didn’t see what happened, and he had egregiously bragged about her. I told him, “You two texted ‘I love you’s’ to each other and then some. You two could’ve kissed and touched.” He had lied to me before, but often thought I was lying when he was the guilty one. Why can he hang out with a chick he bragged out about, but I can’t even speak to my ex, without him giving me drama?
To me this crisis is like the colors red, black and blue. It tastes sweet and sour, mostly sour like a lime. It feels like tension, rage, jealousy and frustration.
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Tomika of San Francisco
My current struggle is to keep my sobriety and stay strong when the s**t gets thick. My health is a challenge, making sure that my unborn child is healthy and strong. Facing life’s struggles and dealing with them one at a time with some help—without medications.
My major crisis experience is addiction. It’s taken me lots of places through the years , and through any hardships and losses of friends, family, money, time. Addiction took my pride, self-worth, self-esteem, and my dignity. I have allowed addiction to rob me of 20+ years of my life.
If I had to describe my crisis in terms of the senses, it would be a taste. A vile, stomach-churning taste you can’t get rid of. There is no color for that feeling, the smell is like death. I’ll never forget it.
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Cyn Bivens
My major crisis is when I left San Francisco in the late 80’s to get closer to family, to feel safe and to feel at home. I wound up losing my family as I knew it and becoming a monster, a stranger, no longer welcomed, surprised that I was never loved the way I thought I was. After I pulled the trigger, after I fought for my life, I still do all the time. I saw I was again that little girl, left alone. Abandoned.
My crisis was the color of crimson and black with a smell of blood and lead. It left a bittersweet taste of sickness that I can never forget.
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Raymonetta Blackburn of Beaumont, Texas and the Western Addition
I never want to forget about the time I’ve been raped at gunpoint by one of my supposedly closest friends. To this day I hate that little boy. It was a disgraceful, degrading feeling. I felt so low.
The color of this experience is RED, the taste like spicy garbage. The feeling is sick, throwing up. And the touch is hard—a bomb.