“And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.” 

― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“1 in the morning. The street must be utterly dark and empty by now. If there is any light outside, it has to be left unconciously by the rich people in town. I brace myself with words, spoken by me to me, in order to sooth myself. All I am craving for is a medicine, any kind, that could help compose myself. I put a knife in my pocket, as it would come in handy for self-defense, in case some pervert wants to taunt or sexually harasses me without paying a dime. Fully dressed in a glamorously pink chiffon one-piece with sheer material that is almost see-through, I drench myself in cheap perfume and step out, to the darkness, which kind of resembles the situation I’m in right now.

I drag my feet to the centre of the town where all the poor girls with the intention of selling themselves gather for ‘night service’. Well, that’s the most polite way to put it. Some might be brutal and call us ‘call girls’. Others are more ruthless but practical. They call us ‘whores’. Though ages may define us, we are all the same. Clueless and ashamed inside, but still manage to pull off an ‘I don’t care’ look.

I stand there in the most provocative way possible, among hundreds of young girls with ginormous fake eyelashes and caked up faces. For a 25 year old woman who already gave birth once like me, age is not on my side. But maybe older men, which probably mean richer ones, would prefer skills over youth, experience over inexperience and dare over stupid reserveness.

I lean against the cold hard wall coated with drawings from street artists. Some with no worry of living expenses on their backs might actually take a minute and enjoy this fine art, but not me, whose head is occupied with thoughts and estimation of how much I would earn after tonight and whether such an amount of money would be enough for me and my daughter tomorrow. Ah, talking about my daughter, she must be sleeping by now, dreaming about her mother, being an agent who only works at night and arrests criminals at the crack of dawn. Like the epitome of a superwoman coming to life, exactly the image I cooked up for her to believe in and precisely how I perceived myself at 10, before life got hard and I fell over its cracks.”

The last sentence completely owned me. My hands were shaking as I dropped the tattered journal, wrapped carelessly in an old brown paper, onto the ground. The basement twirled, as I turned weak at the knees. No, this is not real. Nothing can be real. Somebody must have defrauded my mother’s handwriting. My mind was paralyzed. No thoughts or signal of my brain’s working transmitted. I was standing still like a statue, a fucking statue, only with her jumbled mind and shaky hands. 

Then of all sudden, an upsurge emotion hit me as I slowly registered the words: “DREAMING AOUT HER MOTHER BEING AN AGENT, WHO ONLY WORKS AT NIGHT AND ARRESTS CRIMINALS AT THE CRACK OF DAWN”. Realization of me not being in an absurd mirage tackled the deepest part of my heart. No, this is for real. This journal is hers, my mom's, the biggest liar I’d ever known. Feeling like running and crashing my head into a running train at its full speed, I dashed outside the door like a bullet. The raging winter’s wind hit me hard in the face. I could be knocked down in a minute but I didn’t care. All I know was I kept running, across the park where my mother used to get me every Saturday morning. No, she was not my mother. She didn’t deserve to be. My feet kept moving, every step sounded heavier, until I heard a truck horning right in my ears and my body collided into by a-million-ton-something. I was shattered. I could sense the pain. Gradually, everything turned black and the last thing I smell was something disgusting. Blood, could be my own blood. But it was too painful to think. I slowly drifted into a sleep that felt like eternity. One thing I was certain of, I was fading.