Living As Jaye

Crumbling

I got to Kayla's place and the only bed she was able to offer me was their couch. It was fine for the time being. Kayla had an older sister named Tonja. She was in her late 20's and married to a man named Will who was a dealer. Tonja had a slew of health issues that got her the medications doctors hate giving out; Morphine, Oxycontin, Percocet and more medication that a human shouldn't be on all at once. They had a foster daughter named Iesha. She was eighteen and had a few mental issues. I connected with Iesha because of how they all treated her. She had incontinence issues so she regularly urinated on herself. That only fueled the ammunition for Tonja's and Kayla's humiliation of her. They would jump at her, yell at her, and hit her. I never knew any of this before moving in of course.

I could never sleep with all of that going on and my own PTSD reoccurring flashbacks. One night, Tonja told me to come into Kayla's room. They told me they could help me sleep. Tonja brought out her medication, a pill crusher and a dollar bill rolled up. Tonja gave me a cocktail of muscle relaxers and other pills will her and Kayla snorted their share. At the time, I didn't know what it was and thought they wouldn't steer me wrong. Plus I needed the sleep. It wasn't even five minutes before the pills kicked in. I don't even remember leaving Kayla's room but somehow ended up on the couch and slept until the afternoon the following day. For a month, it was a nightly ritual for me to take this cocktail so I could get some sleep. When I found out they snorted it because it got into their system faster, I began to snort mine as well.

After a blow up fight, I decided to leave their place. I moved in with a man I met online. He understood I had nowhere to go and that I didn't have a job so I paid rent in sex. Thankfully, I didn't have to do much to get him off. I could just lay there as he had sex with me. I couldn't face him and I hated him. He had no teeth and bad body odor but he wanted to give me the world for some reason. I didn't even hate him; it was all men. I got the point where I saw my role was the be mattress. After a month with him, I left and couch hopped all around Milwaukee. I slept and blew my way around just for a sandwich and a place to escape the harsh Wisconsin winter. I became a webcam model and phone sex operator to have some sort of income to support my opiate addiction and newly found alcoholism.

No of these men knew my name; they knew me as Jaye. Jaye was birthed from my literary hero, Jay Gatsby of The Great Gatsby. If you haven't read the book or saw the movie, i'll fill you in: it's about a man who did things for everyone but no one got to know him. He was an utter mystery and he allowed them to use him so he could get one person to love him and even she ultimately rejected and used him like all the others. If that didn't sound like me, I would never know who Shannon was as a person. I didn't care about anything anymore. I wanted love. I wanted someone to see through my bullshit attitude and see the cuts on my wrists. I wanted someone who didn't leave me. I got my wish; I found someone who would not leave me alone no matter how hard I tried. I found Ryan, my trafficker.