285: What if your life was not your own?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. That was the first moment that I started to realize, oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? It was the most horrifying realization that I think I had had up until that point. It wasn't this situation where I was in control anymore. I was in too deep. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 285. What if your life was not your own?

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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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My dad worked in the oil field, so that moved us around a lot. That was just kind of everything I knew was moving and not getting too comfortable with where I lived. My mom, she's very caring. She's someone who would give us the shirt off her back. We always got along very well. My dad was very volatile. You never knew what you were going to get out of him. He would be very caring one moment, and then the next moment he would just blow up on you.

Growing up around him was hard for sure. He expected perfection and wasn't one to shy away from his opinions. He would let us know when something was not up to his liking and he was very hard on us kids. He never was very loving towards my mother and he wasn't the most loving towards us children either. It wasn't a situation where we were being showered with affection. If anything, we were being showered with criticism.

We watched him be pretty abusive to my mom emotionally, and that was something that took a toll on both my brother and I from a young age. As a young girl, I was definitely very independent. I definitely wanted to be the center of attention. I was very ornery. I was no stranger to the belt or no stranger to soap in my mouth. I was the middle child, so I was always getting into some form of trouble.

But the biggest thing about me as a young girl, I always just felt invincible. I was just on top of the world and so strong and brave and I felt from a young age that I was untouchable.

High school and my adolescence, my whole life revolved around basketball. I played basketball year-round. I played on an AAU travel team. All my friends were basketball teammates and my dad was my coach. So my relationship with my dad, it grew in the sense that basketball was what bonded us together, but at the same time it became very unhealthy.

I felt like I had to please my dad not only as a person, but also as a basketball player, which was really tough to do. I remember plenty of car rides home where my dad would just chew me out from a very young age when it should have been just for fun, but my dad took it too serious. He was hard on me from my weight. He would ask me what I would eat, and there was even points where he would have me send him pictures of what I ate.

He would ask me to go work out with him two times a day just to keep my weight down when I was a size double zero. He was just always very hard on me for every little thing that you could think of between how I would dress to the point that I felt like I just had to be almost like a pristine doll. I was very competitive and I drove myself to be the best that I could be.

But when you also have an outside factor driving you further, you're going to be successful. So I do credit my father to my success as an athlete and as a basketball player. I was Allstate. That made my father proud. So that was something that brought me joy and helped us have a good relationship. I think everyone just wants to be the perfect daughter. And so when my dad was happy, I was happy.

Going to college, I kind of had a pre-existed plan that was well crafted and made a lot of sense. I told myself I was going to go to school to become a teacher and a basketball coach, but when it came down to deciding a school, my parents only let me go on two tours. So it was either going to a private Church of Christ school or a private Baptist school, and what fit best for me basketball-wise was the Baptist school.

It kind of just continued on the shelteredness that I had growing up. The first year of college, I didn't really have that wild college experience. I didn't party. I was very naive. I had a friend of mine. He was from New York. He liked to tell me all the stories of where he grew up and how it was so much different than where I grew up and how I was such a princess and I had never felt pain and I'd never experienced anything bad.

He came in my room one night and proceeded to rape me. For the next couple days, he would come to my room and taunt me and threaten me to keep quiet. He told me that if I told anyone that he would show me hell, what stood out to me the most was him saying, "You haven't seen anything bad yet. If you think that was bad, you just wait to see what I'll do if you tell people." So of course I didn't tell anyone.

I finally did earn the courage to tell my parents, but I kind of glossed over and I didn't tell them everything because I was so scared that my dad would just go kill this man. So I told him just little bits and pieces and what I felt was important. I felt like I had to tone it down and really watch his reaction to make sure that I was safeguarding his emotions.

My dad said, well, he didn't do anything illegal. All he did was threaten you. You can't go to jail for that. What do you want us to do? That was probably the most betrayed I've ever felt by my father. I guess I had this big kind of firework anticipation of what he was going to react. My mom just cried and she was quiet and had nothing to say.

After the rape, word got around and people did not believe me. They were very harsh and they said that I was just mad that I was caught hooking up with a black man.

I ended up trying to commit suicide because of that. And that got my parents' attention. Not that I was doing it to get their attention, but things did sort of change after that. And I think my dad learned that he had to be a little bit more careful with me. He told me in the past that depression was something that you could just get over. And that was hard for me to deal with. And so watching him react a little different meant a lot to me.

The second incident was after a night out with a completely different man, completely different school, and it was more of a date rape than the first incident. After the second incident, I definitely went through a state of hypersexuality. I just found any and every way to try to minimize and play down what had happened.

Everything that happened to me in that moment, I tried to recreate because I thought that maybe I could make it not be this traumatic thing. I tried BDSM. I tried to be tied up. I tried to be choked out. I would dress very risque and I would just go out to the bars hoping that someone would pick me up because that's what I felt like I was. I was just this bad, gross, used up whore.

I definitely felt horrible about myself and I felt like all I was worth was sex. I had only had sex with one other man and I went from someone who felt like sex was such a sacred moment to, oh, well, if he can take me that easily. And I didn't even fight back. I mean, I must be pretty worthless, pretty weak. I drank a lot. I smoked a lot. Really anything that I could take to numb me, I would take.

The way I describe it is I was like a teapot. You just keep bubbling and bubbling until one day that you explode. That's what I was doing. I was just building and building and adding on to the trauma and trying to push it down under a rug. But I just didn't know how to cope and I wasn't doing things the healthy way. But in that current state, that was what helped me sleep at night.

After a night out, I was drinking very heavily and I had a friend of mine start to ask me questions about situations that I'd been through and asked me about my rapist and said, if you saw him here, what would you do? And put me in a very weird headspace on top of already being pretty drunk.

I just felt alone. I had a lot going through my mind and I was just tired of hearing it all. And I just felt like the only way to shut off all the voices was to just swallow a handful of pills. So I did and I called my best friend immediately and she immediately came to my house and made me throw up and took me to the hospital. I specifically remember telling her, please don't tell my dad. He's going to kill me.

And she said, I have to call your parents. And within about 20, 30 minutes, my parents were there. And sure enough, my dad was very mad and told me how selfish I was. I minimized the whole thing. And I said, I didn't need to be there and got nothing out of it.

I wish I would have used that opportunity to really get help and talk about what I've been through and why I decided to down a whole bottle of pills. But I was not going to let anyone crack my shell. And I regret that. I did not use it as a wake-up call. I was 21 years old, living a life of partying, drinking, sex, and drugs.

We had a tradition at my school where we would play our rival team and it would be at a median place. It was like this big sparkling city that we went to once a year and when we went to that city, it was always going to be fun. I was very involved with football and just idolized the football boys since they were really the main source of all my promiscuous activities. I was super excited to go play.

I just felt confident and thought I was just this hot shit. I felt like at that point in time I could sleep with whoever I wanted and I wanted them to be the best pro athlete, most famous, the coolest on campus.

I think that was a way to kind of get back at my father. My parents had recently gone through a divorce and it was very messy. So any way that I could terrorize my dad, I would. And I really hit him in the jugular by going after a certain type of men. I was just searching for a high of any kind.

I wanted to feel like regardless of everything that I've been through and regardless of how I felt internally, I was being chosen by these men that could have anyone they wanted and high status men. They wanted me. That was the only way I would get my sense of validation. I wasn't getting it from people building me up. I wasn't in therapy, so I wasn't getting any sort of healing advice.

So whatever I could find that would give me a fix and give me a sense of a high I would take. And that came from attention and sex from high status men. I wanted all things clout, all things glittery, all things materialistic. I was in a very fucked up mind space at the time. And that's when I went to a nightclub.

My friends and I, we cut the line. We were treated like princesses within the club. We got whatever bottles we wanted that night. This man, his name is Steve. He pulled me up on stage, up by the DJ and was filming me dance. He showed me his Instagram and it was verified. And so in my head, that was like the golden ticket.

I was not afraid to use whoever I had to use to get what I wanted at the time. So throughout that night, I wanted a way to get drunk for free, which I got from him. I wanted to be the "it girl" and I got that from him. And I wanted to be kind of spoiled and I got that from him. And it felt really good. He told me that he wanted to see me again and it wasn't anything romantic, which was unique.

And so I kept in contact with him and he kept inviting me to come back down to that city to get an invitation and have the place paid for and have a connection down there was almost gold to me. I kept coming down to that city. He started paying for my hotels. He said, you need to get your hair done, your nails done. And I would find a way to get him to pay for all of that.

It truly felt like a sugar daddy situation, but I wasn't asking him for these things. He was offering them to me. So I wasn't going to be like, oh no, I don't want you to pay for me to get my hair done. Like, oh no, I don't want you to pay for this hotel or these new shoes. He was appealing to me with things that he knew I would want.

Probably two months after meeting him, he tried to put me in the same hotel room as a girl that he told me did videos. And I had no idea what that was, but it gave me a really weird feeling. I later found out that this girl was a porn star and he had brought her down to this city because he wanted her to work at a club for him. And I didn't understand what that was. I thought maybe a bottle girl or something like that.

After that incident, he started introducing me to older men. It was very casual at first and it would just be, oh, hi, this is my friend. First, he would have him join us to dinner. He would have us go to his house and let me just be comfortable with the place. And everything was just very slow paced and I never felt like I was being pushed in any way.

It all felt like it was okayed by me and it felt like I was the one setting up the situations and it never once felt like anything was being forced. I genuinely felt like I was the one using him. It really just felt like this is just something that comes with the shoes. This is something that comes with the new hairdos or the nails that he pays for it.

Things really, really started to progress when he suggested that instead of him paying for a hotel room, he just gets me an apartment. At this point, I'm over the moon. I have four roommates and he's offering to purchase a two bedroom, whatever I want. He's telling me all these promises. I'll get you whatever furniture you want. You just have to go hang out with this guy with me.

And I'm thinking, are you kidding me? All I have to do is go hang out with this man that I've already spent time with and you'll get me an apartment? At that current point in time, I genuinely felt like I had found the dumbest man alive.

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I still at this point did not want to tell people what was going on because I didn't want people to get involved. I felt like if I told my roommates what was going on, they would find a way to get in the way and tell me differently. If people ever asked what I did when I was in this city, I would just say, "Yeah, I was going out clubbing and I was going out to fancy restaurants." But I was never telling them, "Oh, I was going out to this five-star steakhouse with this old man."

Then it really, really started to progress to the point where he would say I would need to stay the night with him. At that point, I felt like I was so far in. I really didn't see the issue. My self-worth was down. If I did have to stay the night with these men, like I've done worse already. And I was able to minimize what I was doing. I found myself in situations that I wasn't proud of at the time, but I was just able to say, okay,

well, I'll get a new pair of shoes or this is what's paying my rent. This is how I'm keeping food on the table. Even though I could have completely just walked away and gone back to my part-time college job in my apartment that my parents paid for. I could have just gotten my car and drove away. But this glimmering, beautiful life that I was somehow creating by just doing these small little things seemed so worth it to me.

I still felt like I was in control even though at this point I wasn't and that's where he wanted me to be. He played a submissive person and acted like I was running all over him but at the end of the day he was pulling all the strings and he had me right where he wanted me to think that I was the one using him. The man that I had already been to dinner with, we'll call him Joe.

Joe was a very well-known man in the city, very powerful, very well-off, and he owned lots of businesses. I had gone to his nightclub, and imagine just the princess treatment of all princess treatment. You're there with the club's owner. So that was a great feeling, and I felt really comfortable with Joe, almost a little bit more comfortable with Joe than I felt with Steve.

One night when I'm staying the night over there, he says, so how much are you getting from being with Steve? And I'm very confused. I'm like, I'm not getting anything from being with Steve. He's like, I don't believe that. I said, I mean, he's paid for stuff for me, but I don't get any money. And he asked me how I would feel if he started giving me money on top of what Steve was doing for me. And at this point, I'm thinking like,

Wow, I've hit the jackpot. Like I have this very well-off man offering to give me money for spending time with him. Like there has to be a catch. And then he drops the catch and explains to me that I have to sleep with him and he'll give me at this point in my life, the largest sum of money I've ever had. It was very appealing to me. It was very, very appealing. So I took the bait in my head. I had done worse for way less and

So we began a sexual relationship, which he was paying me for. Both Steve and him, they both did a really good job of making it seem very natural. And once I started with Joe, it was only natural for Steve to start suggesting other men. At that point, it's almost like you've already broken the seal. And I found myself...

four to five nights a week going to meet with older men and they would take me out to dinner and then they would sleep with me. I was with business owners. I was with politicians, pro football, pro basketball players. I was with coaches, doctors, important men to their respective fields. At that point, I start to realize that I'm not getting paid anymore, but they're giving it to Steve and

He explains it to me that I have to pay for all the things that he's done for me and I haven't been doing all this for free. That was the first moment that I started to realize, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? It was the most horrifying realization that I think I'd had up until that point. It wasn't this situation where I was in control anymore. I was in too deep.

Steve had a connection that played in the NBA, and because of that, he would put me off with these NBA players and their coaches. There would be some nights that I would go to multiple hotel rooms until I made enough for Steve, because the NBA players and their coaches, they wouldn't pay as much as these older wealthy men.

I actually kept in contact with one of these players and he explained Steve would always ask for pictures of me and very suggestive sexual pictures. And I later realized that he would send those pictures to men and use those pictures to sell me out. I wasn't using drugs. I wasn't drinking. I was told I had to stay clean. So my way of coping with everything was just escaping from the moment and

It was very easy for me to act like I was enjoying myself when I was going out on these dinners or when I was sleeping with these men, but it was like a shell of a person. I wasn't really there and that was the only thing that really got me through those situations is just telling myself that this doesn't matter, this isn't real. Steve introduced me to other girls that were doing the same thing and it helped me feel better to know that normal girls just like me were sleeping with men for money.

He was really good at making me feel like what I was doing wasn't wrong. He would make me feel crazy. He would gaslight me and make me feel like everything that I was doing was just part of growing up. And I really wanted to believe that it was. I think when you tell yourself something for so long, you eventually just start to believe it. I started to believe that I was a smart businesswoman. I felt like I was very desired.

I always felt like I had an exit route in place even though I really didn't. I told myself that I was this well-resourced woman doing what more women should be doing. I really felt like I was empowered during this time. It was a really weird contradiction. I didn't feel the best about myself, but at the same time, I felt like I was just hitting gold. I didn't want to go back to where I was.

I didn't want to tell people, so I just kept going. And then he suggested that instead of doing this and instead of sleeping with these men, all I could do is just go work at a strip club. He made it seem like this wonderful idea and that all I would have to do is just go parade off my body. And he made me feel like I would make so much more money. And so I started working at a strip club.

I felt way happier because I felt like I wasn't having to have sex for money anymore. I was making Steve a lot happier because I would bring in a lot more money and he would let me keep a percentage of whatever I made that night and then I would turn the rest over to him. And I felt a little bit of freedom in that.

I called myself a professional sweet talker because you learn to bullshit and really just be whatever these men wanted you to be. I started reaching the point where I started sneaking away money and wouldn't give Steve all the money that I made. I was starting to be a little bit more defiant towards him and he realized it. I was getting a little bit more bold. I was starting to talk back to him and realize that I could do a lot of this on my own.

And that's when he threatened to completely take away everything. And then he offered the option B. I could go move in with this guy out in Florida, which seemed like just this dream to me.

He did not portray this man who I'm gonna call Melo to be a pimp. He just acted like it would be this man that I could go live with and this man was a rapper and he was very successful and he had 200,000 followers on Instagram. He was verified. He seemed very legit. So I made the decision to move within two days. I didn't tell my mom. I didn't tell any of my friends.

I just packed up everything I had into two suitcases and I was on my way to Florida. I met at the airport in Rolls Royce. So I'm like, thank you, Steve, for putting me in this situation. Although I had no idea what it really was. The first day he prepares to go on a yacht. So we do that. He takes me out to a really nice restaurant. And oh my gosh, like if I thought I was treated like a queen before, I'm really living now.

I go to his apartment and we're in the penthouse. We finally get up to his apartment floor. It's a two-story and we go up to the second floor and there is eight other girls. At this point, I'm very confused. I'm like, what is this? And he says, I want you to meet your wifeys. I've never even heard this term before. I wish Steve would have told me what I was getting myself into before.

But I think he knew if he told me, I wouldn't have wanted to go. The second day of being there, they take me shopping. So I have a brand new wardrobe. I have a whole bunch of stuff for my new bedroom. And then he says, we're going to take you to your new room. And he drives me about 30 minutes away from his downtown apartment.

And he takes me to this mansion in a gated community. There is a Mercedes. There's another Rolls Royce. There's a Jeep out in the driveway. And I'm thinking at this point, like, who are these people? What is this? We go inside. I get to see all the other girls and he shows me their bedrooms. Then he takes me to my room and it's just bare.

There's a blow-up mattress laying on the floor. There's a bunch of like old boxes and I'm thinking like something's not adding up here. Why are all these girls living like queens and then I'm treated to a blow-up mattress like there's no furniture?

He makes me call him Daddy. I'm not allowed to call him by his name, Mello. He instantly gives me a nickname and refuses to let me go by my real name. So my name was Snow because how pale I was. I look around the place. There's cameras. There's cameras in my bedroom. There's cameras in my bathroom. There's a camera in every single hallway at all the entry doors.

as well as loaded guns in every single room except for my bedroom. Everything just feels a little too perfect. The house is a little too clean. The bedrooms are a little too manicured. And it's just this weird sense of pristine creepiness. It took me probably the whole time I was there to give in to the whole daddy concept and treating this man like he's a god like the rest of the girls do.

It's on the third day of me being there that he puts me to work at a strip club and I proceed to work at this strip club every single day, no nights off. I'm not given a car. He said I didn't need it and that I had means of transportation. So I was required to Uber everywhere I went. I had no access to money. So asking him for an Uber was not only humiliating, but it was very controlled.

Everything that I had before that made me feel like I had a sense of control was taken away. I had to submit to everything and I was the lowest man on the totem pole. I was very uncomfortable for a very long time. Mello was very bulldog-ish to me. He used his intimidation as a way to control me.

He would try to be affectionate at some times and that was very weird because you're treated like a prisoner sometimes, but you also have to tell him you love him. Before he would send you off to work, he would kiss you on the lips and say, how's my girl going to do tonight? It's kind of hard to blend the two feelings of love and fear. And I watched the girls around me do it effortlessly.

They all would compete for his love and his attention, and that was very weird. Working in the strip clubs there was a completely different level. They were a full nude bar, and they had private rooms. That's how my wifeies made money.

He brought me into the club and had me shadow them. I had to do exactly what they did and he treated me at first like I had training wheels and wouldn't let me leave their sight. They would go into these private rooms and there was no cameras back there. There was no workers. So ultimately anything goes. You would just pick your price up front and that would be how you made your money and

The way my wifeys worked, we were always going to say the highest price possible. And if they weren't interested, there was someone in the club that would. Doing this, we attracted a very, very high clientele. Very, very well-known athletes, celebrities, politicians, business owners, like people that you would see on TMZ. Back in the rooms, we would give them cocaine and that would make them not properly get an erection.

If the men were unable to get an erection, then we were unable to perform sex acts on them. And that was the entire game plan of how we made money. So for example, we would tell him 30 minutes for $1,200. And we would give him fake Viagra, which was really just ibuprofen. And we would give him a very high dose of pure cut cocaine and alcohol.

just hope that he would not get hard enough to where we would have to perform. While I worked with my wifeys, I only had to perform one sex act and that was something that I was not proud of and I actually was scalded and beat for. They told my pimp what I had done and he came to the club, pulled me out of work, and beat me in his car because I had broken the rules.

While we were working at the club, we would have to tell him what we'd make, so when he came and picked it up the next morning, he would know exactly how much to expect. I was making more money than I'd ever seen in my life. I would walk out of the club with 10k on a normal night, and I would give him every single penny. He always told me if I tried to escape, he had all my information, he knew where I lived, and he would find my family.

I had a little sister who was 16. The last thing I ever wanted was him to find my sister and potentially put her in a situation that I was in. That kept me on a thin, straight leash for him. I just knew if I acted right, he wouldn't have to intimidate me. He wouldn't have to beat me. So I just did my best to submit to him fully. And I tried my hardest to show love and be affectionate.

But at the end of the day, I was still a low man on the totem pole, and he was going to treat the other girls way better than me, even if I was doing everything right. And he did that as a way to keep knocking me down to get me to submit. There's girls that had been with him for nine years. And then there was me who was there for like four months. Four months was enough for me. And it seems like such a short period of time, but that's four months of every single day working in that strip club, fearing that you're not going to make enough money.

He finally let me go home to see my family. I think he realized that I was down. To this day, I still don't really understand why he let me go home. Why he would break me down so much and then let me go home. I didn't know if he could harm me when I was home. Although I wasn't around him, all I wanted was to be back, which is weird.

You would think if you're living this horrible life, you would want to go back home and just stay there and never go back. But I remember I asked him if I could come back earlier because he was my entire life. He was my entire income. While I was home, he didn't text me very much. He used to text me all throughout the day and at night and that kind of slowed and he was very short with me and I could tell that he was mad.

I was still so dependent on him and I couldn't understand why he was pushing me away. So I reached out to some other man that I had met and this is a mega no-no. You're not allowed to talk to any other pimps while you have a pimp. But I just wanted answers and of course this was stupid of me because he's just going to tell me everything that I want to hear so that I will switch over to him. And that's exactly what he did.

He told me, well, if he sent you home with the money that you made, he's done with you. And if he's done with you, you need to come to me. And I didn't know any better. I didn't know what I would do with myself. I didn't know how to pick up the pieces. I didn't know a better lifestyle than the one I had been living, even as messed up as this lifestyle was. I was beaten. I was forced into submission. But in the same time, I felt like this was the best life outlook for me.

So I went back to another pimp. I told my mom at the time that this was a boyfriend and that I was getting back with him. She knew she couldn't stop me. So I hopped on a plane within a day. This was a little bit different. He let me drive his car. There was only one other wifey there.

But I was happy because he knew I could work and he knew I made money. So he gave me a lot of freedom that I didn't have with Steve and I didn't have with Mello. He got me my own apartment. He told me he trusted me to go into work. As long as I was bringing in money, he didn't care what I was doing. Jeremiah was way kinder and I would never imagine that he would put hands on me. It was very freeing.

He puts me back in the same club. I made a lot less money now that I didn't have my wifeys, but I was still making a significant amount of money. Jeremiah let me keep some of the money, but not all of it. Say I would bring him back 5k, he would give me $100. I began to be really good friends with the other wifey. He was a boyfriend style pimp.

He would take us out on dates, he would treat us like he was our boyfriend, but we had the job and he was just like a stay-at-home husband. Jeremiah and I actually engaged in more of couple-y things. We did sleep together, which was very unique and doesn't normally happen with relationships with pimps and their girls.

I had a very good situation there, but I got to the point where I realized that I ultimately did not really care for him and I could be doing all this on my own. I convinced him to ship out my car and once I got my car shipped out, I knew that I could leave. I had about 30k that I had saved up that I had been sneaking away.

I blocked his number. I left the key to the apartment on the front porch and took everything that I could fit into my car and was living out of a hotel for about five months. I would work at the strip club and worked for myself. I only had to get the bare minimum that would keep me in a hotel and would keep food on my plate. And so I would work maybe two days a week.

I was finally able to explore and go to the beach, but it was very very lonely. I wasn't able to really date with the job that I had. I told my friends and family back home that I just had a rich boyfriend and that's what everyone believed. I finally at this point started to have everything kind of flood in and all the trauma really took over. I became really depressed and

I turned to drugs. I turned to alcohol. Whatever I could get to get me a high, I used. I was working in a club for six months at this point, and I started to get sloppy and would resort to doing ultimately what I had to do, whether that meant sleeping with men or drugging them extra hard to get out of certain situations. I really became a scammer.

I would get them so high on drugs that they could barely function and run their cards up. I definitely could have gone to jail for the things that I did. I regret more than anything how I treated these men, but I felt like if I wasn't the one that was on top using these men, that they would be taking advantage of me. The club that I worked at was almost above the law.

We had police officers that would come in and they would go to the back rooms and they would be the ones that would be the dirtiest and want the most intense fetishes. I understand not every police officer is this way, but when you see the police and they talk the way they do and they behave the way they do, it's hard to feel safe in a world that I was living in. The scariest situation that I ever had was a really slow night.

My best friend that worked in the club with me, we went up to these two men and they invited us to their apartment and we said sure because there was nothing going on. The offer that they had was quite a large amount so it was worth our while. We were at their apartment and things just started to progress. They were taking pills, they were injecting needles, and their behavior started to become erratic.

We had been there for probably an hour and we hadn't been paid. My friend suggested that they paid us and one of the men became very manic and grabbed a knife and said, I could kill you guys right now. And my friend just looked at me and I'd never seen panic in her eyes like in this moment. She suggested that we had to go to the bathroom and he laughed and said, oh, you're scared. You're scared.

And she just laughed and took complete control and said, I'm not scared. We just have to go pee. We went back to the back room and she went through his bags and found a handful of cash and took everything there. And we left. He proceeded to chase after us in the hallway. We get down to the front desk and he stops at the front desk and says, call the police, call the police. We proceed to drive off.

I'm in the passenger seat just crying. I told her I can't do this anymore. I can't do it. And she says, you have to be a boss. They're going to eat you alive if you act so soft. That was the biggest wake up call to me because I realized I was not cut out for this. And she knew it too.

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Get 80% off your impression kit when you use code WONDERY at Byte.com. That's B-Y-T-E dot com. Start your confidence journey today with Byte. After probably three months of working and being strung out on drugs, my friend suggested that I get out. I realized that I needed to change, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to start over. I didn't know if my mom would accept me.

I didn't know how to tell people what I had been through. I told my friend and she said, "You just have to go. I don't care what you have to do or how you have to start over. You have to leave this because you're gonna die if you don't." I went to my pool at the hotel I was at and I remember I said, "God, if you're out there, just please give me a sign."

And I kid you not, I felt like I heard God talk to me and he said, you have to go. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. I wasn't worried for the first time of really what to do. I just really felt like I was able to be a new person. So that night I packed up everything that I owned, packed up my car and I drove 32 hours to get home.

I told my mom I was coming and she met me at the front door, no questions asked. And since then I've been on a road to recovery. About a month after being home, I found a sex trafficking outreach in my hometown and I volunteered to help there thinking I couldn't help myself so let me go help other people. And that was at the time the most triggering thing I probably could have put myself through.

I thought I was ready and I thought I was strong, but I obviously wasn't. I ended up having to leave there after probably two months of volunteering because it was just too traumatic for me. I went to a new therapist and this was actually paid for by my father. He thought it was for divorce issues because he has no idea what I went through.

I finally had the courage to tell my mom what I went through and she told me don't ever tell anyone about this because they'll look at you differently.

And that was really hard for me because my therapist and I had been working through coming to terms with this and how it affected my life and how it has made me the person I am today. And then hearing from my mom that I needed to not tell anyone about this. She just wanted to protect me and she didn't know the right way of doing that. My therapist really helped me realize what I went through was not my fault.

I felt like I could have done things differently to protect myself or get out of the situation, but I didn't. I was in a situation where I was out of control and how I can regain control in my life. I felt very dirty. I felt very ashamed. I still have regrets when I tell my story, but I would kill myself if I just sit through all the things I could have done differently.

because I was doing everything I knew at that time, everything that I could do to keep myself alive. Healing is something that is not straight. There's lots of bumps. It took a long time before I realized that even though I was this thing in the past or I made these choices that that doesn't define me today,

There's days that I still struggle and I'll wake up and I'll think about situations or I still feel down on myself and feel unworthy that no one will ever want to be with me. I still struggle sometimes with learning who to tell and who to trust. I haven't told my best friends and some people I have told I'm not friends with anymore and that's tough.

I just have to understand that not everyone understands what I went through and how it affected me and how I'm a completely changed person because of it. My therapist helped me work through the fact that my father left a void ultimately in my heart and in my upbringing.

If I didn't have this yearning for his approval, I wouldn't be searching my whole life looking for approval of others. And I wouldn't be consistently feeling like I'm falling short. And that's something that he will never understand and he will never realize that he did. So I have no room in my life for him.

He has no idea that I was in this life. My father thinks that I was with a boyfriend and he's never cared to ask more about it. I just find it completely unbelievable that a parent could have their daughter away for so long and not be curious as to what they're doing.

My mother was trying to find me. She many times almost bought a plane ticket because she wanted to come home, but she didn't know where to find me. And my father has never done anything like that. And that means a lot to me. You can't show up when you want to in people's lives, especially when you're a father. And that's something that's very hard for me to swallow. He's been a half-assed father my whole life, and that's not going to change.

I actually don't have a relationship with my father anymore. It was freeing for me to realize I don't have to worry about how he feels about my choices. Ultimately, the only person I have to account for is God and myself. He still tries to get in contact with me, but...

I just have so much shame of what I've done that I know that if I were to reconcile with him there would be a lot more issues. I know all the trauma that he brought on my mom and myself and my brother and my sister. So for that reason, I really have no desire to have my dad back in my life. Why would you want somebody back in your life that's gonna continue that cycle? As I grow into adulthood, I try not to be like my father.

I've had a hard time with relationships because I see myself being selfish and I feel myself being like my father and I draw away. And that's something that I still have to work on. There's circumstances where I feel like I play the victim and that's something that he did. And I have to take a few steps back and realize this isn't me and this isn't who I want to be.

I know that when I have children one day, I'm going to be the best mom I can be because I don't want them to feel inadequate like I did. I don't want them to ever question their self-worth. The last thing that I want to do is ever knock anyone that's in this profession and finds empowerment in it.

Just because it didn't work for me and because I didn't have control, that's the only reason why I had such a negative experience. And those that are living on their own terms doing this, I find full respect for. When I was in the situation that I was in, I didn't have the chance to make my own choices. My whole day was decided for me. My own name was decided for me.

When you don't have that in your life, you lose who you are. When everything is decided in someone else's hands, you realize your loss of self. When you realize that you don't have a choice, it makes you very, very thankful for the choices that you can make.

I'm grateful that I have the choice every morning to wake up a little bit earlier and go get coffee at Dunkin'. I'm grateful for the choice that I have to pick out the clothes that I want. And I'm grateful for the fact that I get to choose who I want to be every day, the people I want to be around. We really are a product of our environment. The only thing that makes us better as humans is the choices that we make for ourselves.

and learning that even though I made these choices and I was in these certain situations, that's not who I am. I ultimately believe that I needed this event to happen in my life to show me that. I know that's a very weird thing to say that I needed to go through so much trauma and so much hardship to be a better person, but I truly believe that if I wouldn't have been where I was, that I wouldn't be the woman that I am today.

I'm not perfect by any means and I never will be but when you have a self-awareness to realize that you want to be better that's when you're really going to have a better life.

Today's guest requested to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at xoxoskye00 at gmail.com. That's xoxoskye00 at gmail.com. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Andrew Waits, and Aviva Lipkowitz, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westbrook.

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