
It is true: When the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, change happens.
The first time I had sex for money I met a man at the shopping centre while I was wearing an earpiece.
Don’t be too quick to judge me and call me a narc or a cop. That experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. I was raised not to talk, and especially not to talk to the police. Bear with me, I can explain.
I was almost 16 and me and two girlfriends had run off from the group home we were living in. The man, I will call him “Ralph” for reasons that will later be clear, had bought us beer let us come back to his place. Without too much detail, something happened to me in the back room of his trailer. Back at the group home a few days later, the counsellors got wind of this and contacted the police.

The police talked me into calling Ralph while they recorded me blackmailing him for $50 hush money. Fast-forward a few hours later, I am walking into the shopping centre, wire and all, meeting with Ralph. As I walked out of the shopping centre, Ralph was arrested and the money and wire was given over to the police. I was sent on my merry way.
My merry way was to the group home, with my friends and with the aching emptiness only a confused almost-16-year-old could feel.
There were about 20 of us who were teens there at the Miller house, but I wasn’t going to talk about what happened. I was angry and lost, so I started to ‘ralph.’ At first, it was only after lunch. Then it was after dinner, too. Then I wouldn’t eat something unless it was easy to throw up. After a while, my throat got used to my finger gagging it. I would do the wiggle to the back of the throat, and it got more and more difficult. So I started using a toothbrush. Soon even that wasn’t working. I started to think about Ralph, and after that no longer did the trick, I started thinking about my dad.
Watch a discussion with an anorexia survivor and medical professionals about eating negative self talk. Post continues after video…