Money for Something
by Mia Walsch
Echo
It was a relief when nineteen year old Mia Walsch was fired from her job in the windowless room full of filing cabinets. Pretending to be ‘normal’ for eight hours a day was sucking at her soul. So she answered a newspaper ad – “Erotic Massage, Good Money. No Sex.”
Admitting that the only solids she consumed at the time were Ecstasy pills, Mia knows that drugs help her overcome her self-loathing and a mental illness she hides with a pretty smile. Her captivatingly honest memoir about surviving, sex work, drugs, mental illness, friendships and need exposes many myths.
The book comes with a warning because Mia struggles to come to come to terms with so many ‘taboo’ things including self-harm and attempting suicide, while trying to self-medicate the fact that she can’t control her emotions with drugs.
She says “This is why I hate myself. This is why I’m trying to kill my emotions. Because when I let them out, when I let myself feel how I truly feel, they explode out of me with a rage so dazzling and violent that no one can handle it.”
Mia’s honesty is engaging as she pours out her self-loathing onto the pages and tries to navigate safe pathways through her disastrous relationships and completely fucked up life. She brings the reader into her mindset and into her underground world without any sense of judgment or voyeurism.
As the publicity blurb says, the book is also “an exploration and examination of the necessity and urgency of need; need as hunger, need as yearning, the need for drugs, the need to self-harm, the need for sex, attention, self-destruction and the need to escape.”
Acknowledging that sex is just another self-destructive drug of choice, she learns how to be empowered by her work and find like-minded souls. Mia is not in search of ‘normality’ but her journey leads her to find more balance by freeing herself from the “constant chase for drugs and drama”.
Mainstream life choices are not for everyone and Mia certainly didn’t want to live dispassionately. She bravely shares her journey of discovering the hard way what choices she needed to avoid, and what choices she needed to make to live her extraordinary life without hurting herself.
Lezly Herbert
Do you need some support?
If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, support and counselling are available from:
Lifeline: 13 11 14 or lifeline.org.au
Beyondblue: 1300 22 4636 and www.beyondblue.org.au
QLife: 1800 184 527 and www.qlife.org.au
QLife are a counselling and referral service for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people.
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