You’re not helping

Yes! Thanks so much for checking!! Thank God it never came to that! When I turned 17 I was lucky enough to get a job at a coffee shop and was able to save all my money. At 18 I moved into a shared house with college students I found online. I couldn't get financial aid for college because I was still dependent though. I struggled to make it on my own with a 30 hour a week minimum wage job but I had my basic needs met. My plan was to work there until I was 25 and able to go to community college.

Unfortunately, I would continue to be preyed on by opportunistic men in my early 20s bc I was poor, vulnerable, naive, didn't understand what a healthy relationship looked like and had no family or real support system to fall back on. I think men like that can sense the low self esteem or something, bc they find you. At 19, one of my much older customers (40s) had a crush on me and would wait for my breaks to talk to me. I put up with it bc he was fairly good looking, he listened to and complimented me, and tipped me very well, like a $100 bill for a coffee. Caused a lot of drama from coworkers wanting me to put it in the shared tip jar despite him handing it to me directly so he started tipping me on my breaks. We became "friends" and I trusted him. After sharing my plans to go college when I could he convinced me to stay in an apartment he would buy me, and he would pay for college and everything else. I did, signed up for college. Looking back, he may have been married hence the separate apartment. It was going fine until he convinced me to stop working and focus on school. As soon as he had complete control the abuse started. He started bringing home things like coke, then herion. Once I was addicted and dependent on him for my fix, it was nightmarish. I had dropped out at this point.

I escaped by heading to the local strip club, then camming. Honestly? I don't know what I would have done if the strip club wasn't available. I was able to make cash my 1st night and rent a weekly motel until I could get my own place. Long story short, a friend helped me get into rehab and I recovered and got my AA and AS.

Now, I'm 30 and am a rising senior at a UC, almost done with two degrees. I live on financial aid and a scholarship I got from doing well at cc. Life is good. But yeah, shit was hard. Really hard there for a minute. My younger brother escaped our home by selling drugs and ended up in prison. I feel like both our paths are very stereotypical for our home life but it's a lot harder than people realize to do it "right" when all you have is yourself. You survive. I'm actually very lucky I never had to actually prostitute myself, but many girls do to escape and end up with controlling pimps. It's sad.

Were you on the street?

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