Passion

“Don’t go into the sex trade.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“No, really. Don’t go into the sex trade.”

My sister and I were discussing my upcoming trip. All I could talk about was yoga in India and she was afraid I would get kidnapped and sold.

“It happens all the time,” she said.

As crazy as her warning sounded to me, she did have a legitimate reason to be concerned. The newest development in my evolving adventure is that I will be traveling alone, first taking my birthright trip to Israel for eleven days, and then extending my stay abroad for another two months or so. My tentative plan is to travel to Turkey, India, and Thailand for the remainder of my time there. As Emily pointed out, the sex trade is fairly prominent in some of those areas.

Now I know that it can be dangerous to travel alone as a young woman, but I’m confident in my ability to take care of myself. I have traveled a decent amount in my life, and I learned how to stay alert and resourceful from two backpacking trips in the last three years. But despite my self-assurance, Emily’s concern brought up an old fear.

When I was eighteen-years-old and in a Grecian island paradise, I was raped three days into my vacation. One of my best friends and a large tour group of people were all partying on the same beach, but I was a girl who trusted easily and someone took advantage of that. I spent the remainder of the trip and my summer pretending that nothing had happened. I remember feeling like I had been turned inside out; I couldn’t make sense of my sadness.

I ran through the gamut of coping mechanisms, both healthy and not-so-healthy. More than anything, I did not want the experience to define me. The first therapist I talked to simply handed me a pamphlet, as if all the answers to my questions were readily available in stock-answer form. So I fought against the “victim” label and took my own route to recovery. I even went so far as to return to the same beach three years later. I danced into the night as an act of defiance, an attempt to seize my freedom as a sexual being. Love, sex, traveling—I made all of these important parts of my life, and I felt liberated because I didn’t allow one dark moment to overshadow the rest.

The way I saw it, if I didn’t let rape have a lasting effect on me, then I was taking the act’s power away. I didn’t have to suffer if I didn’t want to. According to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, suffering, or dukkha, is an integral part of life. It only ceases when attachment ceases. I was trying to disengage from my suffering under the guise of non-attachment and forgiveness, but part of forgiveness is acceptance.

It’s okay that I was hurt, and it’s okay that I’m a little nervous about backpacking by myself. Of course I’m doing it anyway, but perhaps by acknowledging that my freedom was violated and that it affected me, I can turn my suffering into something beautiful; I can focus my love and energy outward. I’ve realized that suffering and love are not so distant from one another. Even the word “passion,” synonymous with devotion and love, comes from the Latin passio, suffering. To love is to be alive, and to be alive is to suffer.

However, with any suffering I have experienced I have also been blessed with the opportunity to grow stronger because of it; I have a good life and I am surrounded by supportive, loving people. How many others are out there who are unable to rise above their pain? How many people are alone? How many are literally incapable of freeing themselves?

I want nothing more than to show my gratitude for a liberated existence, by using it to help others regain their freedom. The best place I can see myself beginning that journey is in Thailand. The sex trade in Thailand is a part of the huge, global issue of human trafficking. The traumas of women and children who are enslaved in that circuit are beyond my comprehension. The more research I do on the treatment and prevention of human trafficking at the grassroots level, the more I am absolutely convinced that I am supposed to get involved. I can’t look at an informational website without my heart pounding and my throat closing up—I’m not talking about emotional testimonials, but the dry facts on how these organizations work.

I have already reached out to one organization kindly recommended to me by my aunt; I would be honored if they would have me. On their website, they quote activist and educator, Lilla Watson: “If you’ve come only to help me, you are wasting your time...but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This statement explains exactly why I have been high on enthusiasm all day. I’m a ball of energy, ready to burst at the seams with what I can only describe as full-blown passion. Anything I have suffered, I have suffered for a reason; perhaps just to feel the tiniest hint of how it feels to be enslaved. I had my freedom taken away for a moment. There are millions of people in the world who don’t know what freedom even means. That breaks my heart in a way I can’t explain, but opens it up at the same time. Suffering and love, hand in hand. I think I have found something to be truly passionate for.

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.

How do they learn that?
They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.

-Rumi