Where the Flies Swarm

TW: financial abuse, trafficking, rape, abusive situations This post is mainly directed towards people who are living in abusive situations and relationships, people who are looking for ways to get a little safer and hopefully break free from the grasp an abuser may have trapped you with. We live in a digital world. Human sex trafficking is more complicated than the physical violence, invasion, and physical abuse. There are elements of digital stalking, financial abuse, threats, abuse of information, blackmailing, dark web, and other digital elements that make the trafficking world much more difficult to navigate when trying to escape. I can only speak to my experience , and my escape took years because of the digital aspect of abuse and trafficking. The concept of ownership was more than just physical. While being trafficked, my John owned my body, as well as my money, my phone, my wallet/identifications, my time, and my information. After I was able to escape the physical deman...

I wanted to dedicate a post about my struggle with  depersonalization . For those of you who don't know, and according to  Wikipedia , depersonalization is a dissociative  p henomenon characterized by a subjective feeling of detachment from oneself, manifesting as a sense of disconnection from one's thoughts, emotions, sensations, or actions, and often accompanied by a feeling of observing oneself from an external perspective.  It can involve someone feeling as if they are observing moments from a distance.  Depersonalization can happen as a dissociative state happening in present time, but it can also exist long-term, separating the belief that trauma existed from the self. In other words, one can believe that their trauma never actually happened to them,  but rather happened to someone else, or not at all.  This is something that I went through, and still go through from time to time. Every once in a while, I get intrusive thoughts that my ...

  TW: rape, dog being injured This is my dog. His name is Dog. His full name is Dog Puppy Arylide . He's a Jack Russel and Toy Fox Terrier mix, and he's also the love of my life. He is a huge part of my trafficking story, because he's been my companion since 2019, when I first got him as a puppy. We've been through so much together. Mostly good times, but he's also seen the ugly parts of my life too, including some trafficking events that he was present for. He also aided me with companionship every time I'd return home from servicing and being trafficked.     Dog is also an ESA (Emotional Support Animal) which means that he's not medical equipment or professionally trained to aid in my disability like a Service Dog, but he has certain privileges that help me with my disabilities. For example, he can travel with me on trains or airplanes, he can stay with me in hotels at no extra cost, and he can live with me despite "no pets" rules or "pet f...

TW: trafficking, transphobia I've been asked before if my transgender/gay identity is a result of being trafficked. I've also been asked this invasive question by healthcare professionals. To ask this question is to make the mistake of assuming a cisgender/heterosexual identity is a default setting that people acquire at birth, and to assume that to be LGBTQIA+ is a result of something "gone wrong." Lots of people make these assumptions without even realizing it, and they should be called in and corrected when making these assumptions. Being LGBTQIA+ is natural , just as natural as being cisgender/heterosexual. Sexual or gender identity is not a choice, but something that should be explored and identified with curiosity, freedom, and joy.  My journey with my gender identity is my own, and so I only speak for myself. I believe there are as many genders as there are people who walk the earth, because it's such a personal and detailed thing to identify with. I ident...

  The Scream , from the poem Fire TW: SA, grooming, religious trauma If you're a survivor of sexual assault, harassment, stalking, trafficking, or anything of the sort, I'm sure you'd be asked one of these ridiculous questions after sharing your truth: why didn't you run away? why didn't you scream? why didn't you tell someone? why didn't you report it? why didn't you go to the police? why didn't you fight back? These questions come from an ignorant place of someone who has no clue how abuse works. It's not your fault if you didn't do any of the previously mentioned responses. The definition of "grooming" is  the "practice of preparing or training someone for a particular purpose or activity." Grooming is an essential step an abuser takes to ensure that their victim will participate, be quiet, and not question the abuser. After a long period of grooming, I faced abuse with no surprise. There was never a voice in my head th...

TW: rape, trafficking, suicide Apart from visual arts and poetry, I've always had a heart for creating music. I started making music in high school, when I played the piano and wrote several classical pieces. I still have the book I wrote them in! I'd love to relearn them some day. I can't play as well as I used to but I'd love to hear the pieces I wrote and see them come to life again.  I took a break from writing music while in college, because I simply didn't have the time between assignments and not sleeping. Music became something more distant to me, something I "used to do" instead of being constantly engulfed in it. However, during quarantine (2020), I bought myself a keyboard. I hooked it up to my laptop and began creating again. I simply was inspired by other artists and wanted to see what my sound would be like after so many years of not making music. Unexpectedly, the sounds I was creating were much different than the ones I had made in the past...