Endurance is the Job

I used to think survival was about money.

Turns out it’s also about what you slowly give up.

Some nights, after closing shop, after counting small notes and smaller wins, I’d sit alone and feel how narrow my life had become. No big talents. No loud success. Just effort stretched thin across days that looked the same.

Paid sex entered my life like a shortcut I didn’t ask questions about. It fit the schedule. It fit the budget. It didn’t demand growth. I told myself it was harmless — a pressure release for a man still “on the way.”

But something shifted.

I stopped imagining a future that included anyone else. Relationships felt expensive — emotionally, financially, mentally. I began to value control over connection, certainty over risk. Paying meant I could leave unchanged.

That’s the problem.

When you fight life with small skills and small margins, you start protecting yourself from anything that might cost more than you can afford — including intimacy. You don’t collapse. You calcify.

I’m still surviving. Still learning. Still trying to build something solid out of what I have. But now I know this:

Some coping mechanisms don’t destroy you.

They just quietly convince you to stop becoming.