PART 3: VIOLET

January 2020, Sydney

I thought that after the holidays and having that bit of time off and going back to my family home would make me feel a bit better, but I still just feel so uninclined to go to work. I did my first shift in almost three weeks on Saturday; It was so fucking quiet. There were ten girls on, two of them had like a days’ worth of bookings. So, one got four jobs, one got three and the rest of us had like one each. It was insane. Like it was such a bad day. Yeah the weather was miserable outside, whatever, but I feel like, in the past year especially we’ve seen such a decline in clients and money made.

It’s really stressful because I have no other employable skills and I don’t have a degree where I could sidle into another career. So, I’d have to start study again if I really wanted to get serious about getting out of the industry and even then, that would take three or four years and I’m almost 29. I don’t know, I’ve been stressed lately about that. Not that 29 is old, but just about what it means to be getting close to 30. You know?

I don’t want to have kids and I’ve been trying to engage my boyfriend - who I’ve been with for over a year now- in a discussion about this, about the fact that I don’t want kids and he’s indicated that he does. Yet it seems like it’s something that’s unimportant to him and that he doesn’t want to talk about it with me. He’s happy to just sort of trundle along in this ignorant bliss, which is really fucking frustrating for me. So that’s been adding to this overall slump I’ve been in; work, relationship, family is stressful.

But yeah, I managed one shift last week and I’ve got three lined up for the end of this week. But we’ll see how that goes. That remains to be seen, considering I’m cancelling more than I’m going to. But I’m thinking of going back to working days like I was doing this time last year and seeing if that improves my outlook at all. Because I’m finding it just so difficult to be there at night. It gets to 11pm and I just have these weird dissociative episodes, potentially triggered by being tired and potentially because it’s a situation that I can’t easily get out of. But it’s very unpleasant and in the purest sense, I cannot work under those conditions. So maybe if I have a shift that finishes at 5pm, that will be easier.

I’m willing to take the loss if it’s a little quieter but can make consistent money as opposed to doing two night shifts a week and making good money. I think I would rather do that, just to have a little more routine in my life as well. But yeah, just trying to slowly get back into it.

I saw my psychiatrist today and he wants me to start taking anti-depressants on top of a mood stabiliser and an anti-psychotic. And I wanted Modafinil, and I’m really disappointed and I’m not going to start taking the anti-depressants.

I see my therapist tomorrow and then I guess “real life” starts in terms of work. I guess doing three shifts in a row will kind of get me back on track for what I’m aiming for the rest of the year, which is take work more seriously and be there more often. Which is what I always say. I always say it. I rarely do it. But I don’t know, I want to make enough money to travel overseas this year and think about, not getting out of the industry entirely by any means, but it’s eight years and it’s all I’ve been doing and I think I need to think about doing something else at the same time. And doing this project is great, because it’s a taste of a bit of variety in my life. So, that’s what’s going on today. Not much else to report.