Chocolate Monkey Mind

The best thing about being a prostitute is you don't have to stay after sex.

At the age of 10, I dreamt of Hansel and Gretel, chocolate houses, chocolate-hearted people, and sometimes chocolate squares melting in my mouth. By the age of 12, I was being used to fund my mother’s drug addiction. We lived in squats, filled with dirty mattresses and syringes. However in one of the darkest nights of my soul, I heard a kind, calm, inner-mind-voice say: "Who you are becoming, is not who you are."

This resonated deep within the core of who I was, as I had spent years trying to stop my body from heroin-clucking and gouging out in alleyways, while listening for that voice’s whisper, just one more time.

Eventually, my street walking days came to an end.

Jerro chose me instead of prettier Jan. The next day he returned and the next. He took me to a hotel and I detoxed there. After a few weeks, my periods returned, and there were more pregnancies too.

Then one night he got down on one knee and proposed.

"If I say yes, will you call me Slut every day?" My calm monk-mind gave me the answer. He glared at me like I was a cockroach on a plate. Instantly my anxious, controlling, paranoid, monkey-mind drowned out my peaceful stillness.

"How dare you mock him? Who do you think you are," it yelled, "Asking questions? You’re a stupid cow that no one else will want."

I went back to drinking, not using drugs; but drinking a lot. More flashbacks were triggered, more vivid than ever before. The anxiety overtook my breathing and thinking. I couldn’t do anything but drink. A neighbor attacked me, and then parenting was the last thing I was able to do. I had no choice; I stole the wedding money, left the girls and the bottles, and ran away.

I took a February flight, and it landed on the beautiful island of Gran Canaria.

During the day, I went touring, as I tried to unscramble my sober-minded storms. At night I went dancing and had not lost my touch, in drawing a crowd of drooling men. However, the hen nighters from my apartment block did not like me getting all the attention from the guys. They wanted to scrap.

As if I would be frightened of them!

Over the week I had become conscious, of my unconscious, childhood memories. As a result, I learnt to gain control of my triggers, and my monkey mind’s, hateful chatter. I became more in control of myself too. I started visualizing a smoother, chocolatier, kinder, future for me and the girls. However, every second that passed reared the unanswered slut question. It was taunting emasculated Jerro, and for whatever reason, my neighbor was back on the warpath again.

I needed time to think about, what I was thinking about, but...

Note: for listeners over 18.