Hannah Jayde

 

 

Okay, so — not exactly how I imagined turning 30 going.

 

But here we are, and honestly? I've stopped expecting my life to follow the script I wrote for it; as it turns out, that script had a cheating husband in act three and I simply refuse to sit through the rest of that particular show.
 

I'll back up...

 

I'm Hannah. I'm thirty. I'm a size eighteen on a good day, none of your business on a bloated one, and I have the kind of presence that makes people look up from their phones when I walk into a restaurant.

 

I came to terms with that last part when I was nineteen, during a chapter of my life about which I've always been more at peace with than people expected me to be.

 

Escorting, for me, was never something that happened to me. It was something I chose, with clear eyes, because I was young and curious and I liked people and I liked the feeling of being genuinely, uncomplicated-ly wanted.

 

I was good at my job. I retired early, I moved on, I got married, I thought that was that.
 

--- HA ---

Here's the condensed version of what happened next: 

 

Six years, a mortgage, a shared cat named Gerald, and the discovery that my "friend", my "life partner" had been sleeping with another woman for at least fourteen months. 

 

I took Gerald. I left everything else, including the version of myself who had spent years quietly minimizing myself and my needs so that a man who obviously didn't deserve it would feel better about himself.

​

That version is gone now and I don't miss her.

What I do miss — what I am actively, deliberately coming back for — is the feeling of being in a room with someone who has chosen to be there specifically because of me. My laugh, my curves, my ability to make two hours feel like the most interesting two hours of your week.

 

I missed being desired and wanted, not just habituated to. There's a difference. I know it acutely now.

 

New chapter. Same fabulous woman, slightly more tired, significantly more certain of what she's worth. Shall we?