My nephew has a series of books titled ‘Last night I dreamed I was… (insert Astronaut/Cowboy/Mermaid here)’. So, last night I dreamed I was a prostitute. I was, thankfully, spared the explicit detail of servicing my clients but they were men I actually knew, albeit from a long time ago; friends of old friends. The crux of the dream was that they left my house promising to bring men I know back to be serviced by me. I felt intense shame at the thought of my friends knowing what my new chosen profession was.

So I woke this morning and lay in bed for a while thinking about what it would be like to walk into this life. What it would be like to stand in front of the men, and of course the women, I know and reveal to them what I now did for work. That despite my education and professional achievements I had rerouted the course of my career to the carnal, rather than creative. The scent of that deep sleep shame lingered with me, not quite colouring my cheeks, but making me reflect on what steps would be necessary to take me there.

I’ve been interviewing some sex workers in the last while. Talking to them about how they got into working on the street. There’s a million tiny steps into sex work but the main avenues seem to be drug addictions, dodgy boyfriends and debt. Not one of them told me they wanted to be a prostituted woman when they grew up. None had stood up, a gap-toothed six-year-old, in front of their class and relayed sex as the profession of their dreams, amidst the wannabe firefighters, unicorns and nurses. Certainly none of them had taken considered steps towards their goal of street sex. It was no one’s fairytale.

And the shame of getting to a goal that you didn’t ever set for yourself? Well I think I finally understood that last night. I think I understood why you would want to crowd your life with a orchestra of drugs and drama, to drown out the noise of judgement. I think I understood the strained relations with the families left behind, and this time from the perspective of the women (I have long understood how having a loved one leaping into the abyss, wreaking a trail of carnage in their wake must feel). I particularly understood how good it must feel to have regular people accept and love you.

I can’t put myself in their shoes, I can’t see my life spiraling out of my control and ending up where they are. But that’s the thing too; It’s not because I’m more educated (I was chatting to a woman who got offered a full PHD scholarship just the other day), or because my family is more stable (some of the women come from the perfect model of a nuclear loving family), nor because I’m straighter, less experimental, or have better choice in friends. Ending up on the streets is like falling in love. Part choice, part dumb luck. And if that’s the truth of it, that it’s more roulette than tick-a-box, how come we judge them so harshly? I haven’t figured out the answer to that yet.