buttonwillow wrote:Sometimes I'm not sure I want to live either. I'll be damned if I know what I can do that will make a difference, here this brilliant woman worked so hard and gave so much, even her life and I can't offer anything even a tiny fraction of that.
I feel you on this. There was a terrible night a few years back when a
very dear person betrayed me in a way that just about crushed my resolve to continue helping prostituted women. We talked all night long and at one point I was so exhausted mentally and physically that when the subject of the stress hurting my health came up I said , "Fuck it if my poor health kills me by 30, maybe I don't want to live all that many more years in this awful woman's hell where I can't make a difference anyway." For a few seconds I actually meant it.
There are still bad spells and always will be, but when I think on all the people who have told me that reading my writing or hearing me speak changed their minds about pornstitution I know I've got some fight in me yet. Giving up and living a carefree life sipping drinks on a beach is just not an option; my conscience would haunt me.
In the current issue of the excellent
Satya Magazine there's an interview with Jimmie Briggs, a journalist who has spent the past six years capturing the stories of child soldiers in Africa, not a fun or easy job but a necessary one. I got teary when I got to this part because it mirrored my emotions exactly:
How do you cope with witnessing this trauma?
Before I started this project, I didn’t have a healing process. I didn’t know how to prepare myself for what I was about to see. In the field of journalism you are affected by stories that you cover, but there is a reluctancy to talk about it. I was very traumatized but didn’t know it and couldn’t admit it. It manifests itself through extreme temperamental mood swings, nightmares, flashbacks and shakes—even today, coming here from the Tribeca Film Festival. My friend is pitching this documentary project [based on the book] and an hour ago we were talking about it, and my hand was shaking. It’s a struggle within myself. I’m trying to get to a place of resolution and healing within myself. At the same time, I have a daughter, and I’m just trying to be a good healthy parent for her. But then also, being drawn to these issues, unwillingly almost. The next book is going to be on gender violence and war. There is reluctance inside of me to go back into this situation, but at the same time, I feel on some level called to do it. I feel like I can do it respectfully and truthfully and honestly. Maybe a part of me feels like, for better or worse, this is what I’m good at.