Conditional Love

How family estrangement broke my sex-working heart

// Isolation by Yasuhisa Yamazaki

A s a child, I learned that love was highly conditional based upon what you could do or how “useful” you were to someone — what you could do for them.

I remember my mostly-absentee father would only come to see me if I would give him money for drugs. He left for good when I was eight, after cheating on my mom with her trauma…