It All Comes Out Even
One of the best parts of being an escort is financial freedom. Financial freedom is more than buying stuff, it’s the gift of looking forward. I was spending time with a friend recently. We hadn’t seen each other in a long while, and we were talking about how things have changed so much since we first met. He had just become full-time at his company rather than freelancing. The stability and structure (in addition to the pay bump) had enabled him and his wife to save more, begin investing, and increase their quality of life.
I’ve heard it said that it’s more expensive to be poor in this country than it is to be rich. You buy the cheaper shoes because it’s all you can afford…but because they aren’t well-made, you buy a new pair every year. You know that better-made shoes will last you longer, but maybe buying those shoes means you can’t make rent or maybe you just can’t afford them at all. So, over the course of five years, you spend three times the cost of the better-made shoes…but that was the only option you had.
A parking ticket that triples in the time that it takes you to acquire the funds, an older car that requires repairs every year for you to pass your emissions (been there!), eating out (even cheaply!) because you’re either too tired or broke to buy groceries for the week, a spontaneous purchase you put on a credit card to seek some small amount of comfort in a harsh and cruel world adds to the growing mountain of debt and makes you feel even more undisciplined and self-destructive and resent your need for any small amount of comfort in a harsh and cruel world instead of white-knuckling it and living “within your means” like you know you’re supposed to do.
You know all the things you’re supposed to do, you just…can’t.
I’ve been in similar situations during difficult times in my life. So focused on repairing the past in the present that dealing with the future feels insurmountable. Catching up catching up catching up…but never getting to where you’re supposed to be. Every problem has a price tag, and that cost is always more than you can afford.
Being able to look towards the future and see that it holds promise and opportunity…being hopeful…I struggle to put into words what that means to me.
And when I was in positions like the ones I mentioned above, people helped. Often, the people who offer support aren’t rich. They might not have a lot either. But they helped because they care about you specifically or they care about people in general or they just understand what it’s like to feel totally helpless…and then have someone help. It heals a small part of you that believes that goodness doesn’t exist – but even if it does, it’s not available for you.
My true favorite part of financial freedom is the ability to help other people. I like giving. I don’t want praise. I don’t want a tax write-off. I want people to know that goodness exists in general, but more so that it’s available to them specifically. People aren’t good or bad. Sometimes you’ve been hurt so you hurt other people. Sometimes you’ve been hurt so many times in the same way so you continue on the pattern because the hurt you know is better than the hurt you don’t. Sometimes you’ve been handed a shitty hand that kept getting shittier and shittier until someone takes a few cards and kicks you out of the game.
When I have enough, when I have extra, I believe in sharing with those who have need. When I needed, people helped without terms of service. Whether that means $10 to a man at the stoplight asking for money, sending a Venmo to a friend of a friend for groceries, covering my friend’s coffee when they’ve had a shitty week at work. I have no idea what that man will use that $10 for, and I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I don’t plan on checking in with that person to make sure that my Venmo was earmarked for necessities only. My friend has enough money for their own coffee, but that’s not the point. Goodness and love and empathy should be given freely and without expectation.
We are all existing on this weird blue-green marble together and moving through similar life experiences in different environments. Birth, death, loss, love, meals shared, holidays and the specific rituals our families and communities create to celebrate them, bouts of laughter with long lost friends about something that happened so many years ago (it feels like it was in another life!) and the past coalesces with the present and all the laughter spills over into tears because you can’t believe you all made it. So many didn’t. How crazy is it to be alive right now. Against all odds.
If you have a little extra goodness, share it. Not because you want it to come back to you, but because it already has.
Hi! I’m Anna Carter, a GFE escort in Manhattan, NYC. I’m originally from Atlanta, GA.