Wild Placement (A Story About Survival And All That Was Lost)

*Disclosure: This work contains mature subject matter related to the adult entertainment industry, emotional trauma, and personal identity. which may be uncomfortable for some readers.*

The director screams, “Cut,” and my model liaison rushes to my side. She offers me water and recommends a makeup touch-up. She’s there to make sure I’m doing okay.

I mean, I am the most important part of this set.

She hands me a sweating bottle of water. The coldness brings me back to being a child swimming in a pool. It doesn’t make much sense considering what I’m doing now, but all I can think about is the safety I felt when I was younger—and how I abandoned it to do something my family despised, something that left them consumed with disgust.

They stopped treating me with so much care. I felt more from what this stranger is giving me, and for a moment, I feel darkness creep in.

Scenes blur together in short takes and longer stretches of pretending everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now.

It’s also been about two years since I’ve seen my family.

I barely hear from them. The only time my family reaches out is when my brother wants money or feels the need to remind me how much he despises me. It’s funny—when nobody notices you, you do something extreme to survive, and suddenly everyone notices you. But they never realize you did it for survival. For them, even. Then, when you refuse to give them a piece of what you earned from it, they resent you for that too. As if they deserved it.

Sometimes it feels like it was all for nothing. I try to steer clear of that headspace.

After all the disrespect I’ve gotten for this profession—after my brother telling me I’ll never be loved, that I should never look for a partner, that I should just keep doing what I’m doing because nobody could ever love someone “used up” like me—why would I want to give him any of my money?

I gave it to him anyway.

I stand up on aching legs and walk to the dressing room. It’s nothing fancy. That depends entirely on the company you’re working for.

I pause and hold my breath for a moment, trying to find my center. Trying to remind myself that I built independence for myself. That I no longer rely on anybody but me, even if that freedom can feel lonely.

There’s comfort in knowing I did this on my own.

Even though, no matter how hard I work or how much effort I put in, people will always see this as an “easy” job, and they’ll see me the same way.

But there is nothing easy about selling your body.

I feel jaded sometimes.

Other times, it feels empowering. I feel beautiful—stunning, even. Sometimes it even feels good. On set, I feel powerful because I have control. But the second I step back into the normal world and its social hierarchy, I feel like a lost soul.

I find myself yearning for a life I no longer think I can have because, for the rest of my life, even if I leave this industry, I’ll always be stepping down into lower pay for bullshit work—jobs where I work for someone else and nobody cares about me.

At least in this industry, my boundaries matter. My standards are respected.

But is having respect for my own standards enough if I don’t have the respect of my family or friends?

I’ve had to say goodbye to a lot of people. People I thought would never judge me. Some were strippers. Some became nurses. Others just worked regular nine-to-fives. They told me they couldn’t respect what I did, and eventually we drifted apart.

It felt like being pushed overboard and left beneath crashing waves. I chose to swim anyway. Hard.

I felt disrespected. But the last time I checked, I didn’t need anyone’s permission to decide what to do with my own body. To them, though, it didn’t matter. If they wouldn’t do it, then neither should I.

Even though they would still watch it. How could someone not support you by quite literally supporting you through views?

And even when their judgment stings like a tarantula hawk, I remind myself that my worth isn’t tied to their acceptance. I built this path, and I get to decide what success and freedom look like for me.

I stare at myself in the dressing room mirror and find an emptiness in my eyes I haven’t seen since I was a child. There’s more light in my face now, but something duller in my gaze.

And I can’t help but see the girl I used to be—miserable, living in a house full of people who treated me like a ghost.

The second I left, I was still the problem.

Maybe I always would’ve been.

I moved across the country at nineteen years old to do a job most people consider extreme, but it benefited me in ways people who haven’t lived it will never understand. After years of trying to explain myself and constantly being told I was “too smart for this,” I realized nobody was ever going to fully understand—and they don’t need to.

I’m 21 now and I stopped looking for people’s approval. In myself. In my work. In my life.

What I chose is what I chose, and there’s nothing I can do to undo it now.

Whenever I start to feel ashamed, I remind myself what I have built, the freedom I have gained from being apart of this industry. The confidence. The self love. A place to care for my mental health the way it should’ve been before.

I feel empowered in my own time and space.

And there’s something powerful in that.

I live with luxuries most people don’t. Companies send me merchandise. Fans send me money simply because they adore me. A strange form of “love” I receive from strangers.

Maybe it’s for shallow reasons.

The things I did were for me.

And it took me a long time to realize that.

The reason I left home in the first place was because I felt unwanted. Unneeded. Like a burden. I felt like I caused pain to everyone around me.

As someone with borderline personality disorder—unmedicated and undiagnosed until eighteen—not many people tried to understand me. I was just labeled crazy. Broken.

Those words came from my own family, and they carved themselves into the inside of my skull.

But I refused to believe that was all I was.

I had to be more than that.

And finally, I reached a point where I could truly see myself for who I am.

I think I’m beautiful.

For the first time in my life, I see beauty in myself—inside and out—and nobody can take that away from me. I built it. I fought for it. I accept every flaw and every strange little thing that makes me who I am. I am authentically me.

There’s beauty in that alone.

Can you believe it took selling my body and seeing myself exploited online for me to finally find beauty in the things I once hated about myself?

How many people can say that?

My relationship with my parents has drifted, but I try to rebuild it every day. They don’t reach out the way I do, but I don’t blame them. We’re all trying to figure life out, and none of us got a handbook.

Though honestly, I think I’m doing it better.

People assume a girl in the porn industry must’ve lived a horrific life. Mine wasn’t butterflies and rainbows, but I wouldn’t call it horrific either.

But sometimes people can try their hardest, and it still isn’t enough.

That’s one of the cruelest truths about life. The harsh reality check some people glaze over.

Most people live with resentment because of it. I chose to build something better from what I was given.

I didn’t come from a family of drug addicts. I didn’t come from extreme poverty. Poverty, yes—but even when there wasn’t food in the house, there was always some way to eat. Sometimes my school would deliver holiday food baskets directly to our front door so I wouldn’t have to carry them home in front of my classmates.

To save me from embarrassment.

Can you think of anything more embarrassing than what I do now?

And yet it’s still for the same reason:

So I can eat. So I can take care of myself.

I’ve always done what I had to do to survive.

I touch up my makeup and prepare myself to walk back on set to finish the scene. I look in the mirror a little longer and see a strong, resilient woman staring back at me.

I love her dearly.

I smile and whisper to myself, “Imagine where you’d be if you never left.”

The thought makes me shiver.

Then laugh.

Fuck that.

I walk back onto set. The director and the other talent wait patiently for me. Everyone smiles, tells me I look beautiful, tells me they’re ready whenever I am.

And for the first time in my life, I feel a sense of placement.

A wild placement, maybe—but nothing about it feels forced.

I’m standing tall, fully present in my own body, and for the first time, I know I belong on my own terms.

A wild placement for a wild woman.

I never said goodbye to my old life.

I just said hello to another one.

Life is full of opening and closing doors, but the door to my old life never fully shut. Even cracked open, I refuse to let go of the girl who shaped me. Without her, I wouldn’t be here.

She was willing to survive anything for peace of mind and stability.

I wish many things had been different, but I will never hate myself for the path I took, no matter how heavy the weight of it feels sometimes. The only reason it still hurts is because part of me still fears what other people think.

And I think most people carry that fear.

But I’ll never stop fighting for myself.

This path led me to the love of my life. It led me to my best friend. It led me to people who didn’t shame me for my choices, but admired my survival.

“Own that shit,” they’d tell me.

And maybe that’s why I was meant to enter this industry—not for fame, not for lust, but to find my people.

Though, admittedly, the sex can be fantastic.

And so, with every step forward, I carry both the scars and the triumphs, and in this freedom, I feel a release as raw and powerful as an orgasm—one that reminds me I am alive, I am in control, and I can define my own pleasure without fear but with confidence.