Here is a blog post I wrote 4 years ago about an experience I had over 5 years ago….

We made eye contact for no more than two seconds.

The world stopped in that moment.

I had never seen such hurt and hollow, completely lifeless eyes in my life.  They were like a vacuum.  A vacuum that sucks all the life and goodness out of something and suffocates it in its vortex.

Her eyes boasted consumption and greed, but not her own.  She was the reflection of others’ consumption, other’s greed.  She was the mirror of society, the mirror no one looked in because they didn’t want to see who they really were, what they had allowed themselves to become.

It was all there, in her eyes: every time she was bought, the pull of the vortex only became stronger.  Everything anyone had ever done to her, she took into herself.  She became the reflection. She became the greed and consumption; after all, she was its product.

In only a matter of two seconds I was forever branded.  Her eyes sheared my heart and I knew I could never return to ignorance.

This was written based on my first experience seeing a woman caught in the snares of prostitution. She was young and walking 23rd Ave and Indian School.

Breanna Vales