In between the kids starting school, bringing harmony to the multitude of schedules, attending trial and living through the events that life brings, I have been weeding my way through the various pieces of information written on the sex industry, and in particular the subject of de-criminalization.

As necessary with prudent research, one must always read an article in light of who funded the particular "study." I have found this to be ever so true for this topic. So as I plod along, slogging my way through, I thought I would share, not my stance on de-criminalization, but my fundamental belief about sex work.

While my time on the Downtown Eastside is the part of my life you hear me speak the most about, due to its relevance to the Pickton trial, I have also worked in a number of other venues - both legal and illegal - as an adult and as a minor. I will only speak to my experiences as an adult here for everyone knows any child involved in the industry is exploited. Overnight on my birthday however, I transitioned from child to adult, and these are the experiences I will speak to - those as an adult.

I remember friends convinced me back when I became a legal adult that if I went and got my escort license I would be making some big money, I bought into this line of thinking as it seemed everyone or most of my social circle was into this lifestyle. Part of the process of getting your license was paying a fee, doing a criminal records check and going for an interview with the police. To me, that is in and of itself...weird.

I sat there and chatted with a very beautiful female police officer from vice who warned me that if I got into this profession, there would be people asking me for sex and offering me money, to which I assured her I would never do any such thing. She knew I was lying, and I felt stupid having to lie. I remember watching her lips move, but really do not remember what they said. All the while I was thinking, "Huh, you're going to kind of like, be my pimp." The thinking in my mind being, I have to get a license from you and pay you for this license, so in a way it does mean I am working, at least indirectly, for you.

When I came out of this daydream of paradoxical thinking, I remember her just looking at me, as she said heavily, "I will approve you for this license because I must, but you will never be the same." I thought she was being dramatic, and I clutched my pink slip of paper and raced on outta there, a fully licensed escort.

Here is what I will tell you about my experience as an escort: Yes, there is more money. Yes, you are off the street. Yes, you are somewhat safer. However, I would say in no way are you emotionally or mentally safer, and that greatly affects the quality of one's life. While I understand duration of life is important, is not quality as well?

Drugs are just as rampant off the streets as well. Just because you do lines of coke through $100 bills instead of being huddled in some doorway smoking a crack pipe does not mean the dope won't eat away at your life and health and are not just as much a problem on and off the street. Violence is still present and so are very, very well-executed mind games. If a woman is your product, you want her to look good, so you cannot leave marks. The invisible way to control her is through mind games, and the psychological damage done to women in the lifestyle can take a lifetime to overcome.

Here is what is still the same: You have women coerced through various ways into selling their bodies and women who get into it thinking the money will be fast and easy. What they do not know, and what you cannot ever convince someone who thinks this kind of work is a good idea, is how much it will take away from their soul and how much It will forever change them. There is a thinking that as long as there is good money to be had, what you are doing cannot be that bad.

Selling your body is selling your body. Whether for a quick $20 or $1000 a night, you are allowing a stranger to enter and use your body for money. The damage done to a women whether she wears Prada and Coach or hand outs from the local mission because her drug habit eats all her money is exactly the same.

One is able to look better than another so they can then argue that they are not affected by their choice, they can give the illusion that their choice is somehow a desirable choice because of the financial freedom they may posess. I find they are in need of the most compassion and support. How low must your self-esteem be for you to by in to the lie that your worth will come from what you own?

I eventually decided that escorting was not for me, so I just worked off a pager, seeing established clients and ones I got from word-of-mouth. It would take a while for me to start the spiral that would lead me to the Downtown Eastside, but I say all this so you understand I have experience in many different aspects of the sex trade.

In all of it, I found that after you knew the girls for a while, they had certain things in common. Whether it was past sexual abuse, complete lack of self-esteem, coming from an abusive household, growing up with no parents in the disastrous would of government care, perhaps her own sex addictions, a desperate need for men's approval or a desperate need to fit in with the crowd she finds herself in or being a victim of rape-Whatever it was it impacted them in a way that made the idea of selling their bodies a good idea -whatever the problem, there was a lie planted. The lie is that, you deserved this or this is now who you are or somehow what happened to you took away your worth and this is all you are good for now.

I truly believe that there is a traumatizing thing, something that shakes one's being so fundamentally that it can cut a line between one's own body and soul. This cut allows a woman to let a man to use her body entirely for his own pleasure, and allows her to believe it's OK. I also believe there are lies out there that girls who sell their bodies believe, like that they are taking control of their lives-that they are the ones actually taking advantage of the men-that they are being empowered.... that they are choosing this for good reasons...that selling one's body is a personal choice....as well as other thoughts.

I understand the desperate, fanatical need to hold onto this way of thought, for it allows one to be able to reconcile what is happening. It allows one the illusion of choice, for behind this thinking lies the belief that one is choosing to sell their body.

In my day I would have fought tooth and nail with anyone who said I didn't love what I did. I would have said this is a great way to make money and does not hurt anyone, I would have said it's my body I can do as I wish.

I once heard youth is wasted on the young, It is not older, wise women that are for sale; it is our young and vulnerable for sale, and I think that saying is entirely applicable here, for a 20-year-old girl cannot know what the immediate impact on her will be when that man gets off from on top of her, nor can she even fathom the impact 15, 20, 30 years down the line.

I am also of the belief it is easy to lose perspective of something if all you do is hang out with the same, like-minded folk. I hang out with people who think the same as me-don't get me wrong but my thinking is also fluid and can be changed. Coming from the world of selling sex, I understand the desperate, almost co-dependent, way women in the sex trade can stick together.

When in the life, I had few friends outside the life, for lots of reasons mostly the hours I kept, the huge diffrences in lifestyle.I even felt I was somehow more enlightened than other women because I had what I thought were revelations of truth. Now I realize I was believing some pretty strong lies about me, my self-worth, who I was as a woman and what my role in society was.

I was not able to leave the streets until I met an amazing woman who offered me a new perspective on life. It was not until I left the street that I was able to slowly unwrap the layers inside me that had been hidden for so long because of the front I needed to stay in that life. Once I re-discovered those layers, I was able to properly see what deep, long-lasting damage I had done to myself.

I am still working through issues directly stemming from when I sold my body, but I hold my head up very high, for I know now who I am and who I was created to be. I do not believe that anyone was ever created to sell their bodies.

I did an impromptu survey the last week and not one person I talked to thought it was a good idea to become a prostitute.

Not one.

I asked nurses, a grocery store clerk, a daycare provider, a neighbor, my daughter, a construction worker, an unemployed person, a waitress, a janitor supply company worker, a teacher, a single mom, a dad, a computer programmer, and a smattering of other folk who happened to be in my range of conversation.

If you don't hold my 15 years in the sex industry as a testament of the sex industry or the random poll of people who do not believe prostitution is a good idea, then the pimp I know and posed the same question in his own declaration said it best:

"If my daughter ever came home and said that sh*t to me (that she wanted to become a prostitute), I'd ship her off somewhere very far away and slam her ass into Christian school and beat the sh*t outta whoever put that sh*t into her head." While not the best way to deal with the situation or even the best wording, I think, perhaps, most feel that way.