My team and I spent Valentine’s Day in Chiang Mai, Thailand, home to one of the largest red light districts in the world. We figured that the women trapped in prostitution could use some love on this holiday that’s all about love… so we baked some cookies, put them in bags with notes written in Thai (“You are loved,” “You are special,” etc.) and headed into the city. I thought the realization that this would be tough to see was enough to make me ready, but I was so wrong. You can’t be prepared to see something like that face-to-face, much less for the first time. I had heard of this injustice called sex trafficking before, but they were just stories until now. This day put faces in those stories and made them real… the kind of real that makes you blink twice, the kind that’s hard to believe exists even when you’re standing in the middle of it.
Here, people enter prostitution for many different reasons. Families sell their children’s bodies for money, often making these kids the primary income providers and forcing them into a life they didn’t choose. Men and women choose to enter it because it brings in more money than a lot of other jobs and they have families to provide for. Some do so because they’ve grown up around it, and they believe that’s what they’re worth. The list goes on and on. But the point is that none of them can say that they’re there because in the depths of their souls they want to be. All of them are trapped in a life of emptiness, of pretending to feel a way that they don’t feel, of going through the motions and doing what they have to do customer after customer after customer.
The first time I saw an older white man holding hands with a young Thai woman, there was little room to question his plans for the night. And then I saw another “couple” and another and another, and I realized that these were just the ones that were easy to notice. There was no way of knowing whether the Thai man and Thai woman eating dinner together were really a couple, nor was there a way of knowing whether or not the Thai “father” walking with his young “daughter” were really family. The more I saw it, the more upset I became… how can anyone think it’s okay to do this? And then we turned the corner onto the main street. This street is lined with bars and massage parlors where women stand outside, trying to attract customers and waiting to be bought. And then I watched something that I’ll never get out of my mind: an older white man (maybe sixty) walked away from the bar with a Thai girl (maybe twenty-five), he got on his motorcycle and she got on behind him, and they were gone. I didn’t know the girl, and I could only imagine where they were going… all I knew was that a man just put a price tag on her and would destroy a little bit more of her world and sense of worth that night. It had never been more real to me than in that moment. I was angry, I felt like I would get sick, and I wanted to run down the street popping the tires on every motorcycle I saw so nobody else could drive away like that. Instead, we kept walking and gave out a few cookies along the way… trying desperately to believe that somehow, a cookie and a smile could make the smallest difference for someone.
About a hundred feet farther, we heard music playing from a celebration across the street, because it was Valentine’s Day after all. It was Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years…
I have died every day waiting for you
Darling, don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more.
And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more.
The first time I ever heard this song, it was in a video about the adoption of a child with Down Syndrome… which you might know is one of the straightest ways to my heart; I love this song. So when I heard it playing on this street, I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is one of my favorite songs!” …and then my heart sank. There are so many interpretations for the lyrics, but to me, it’s about a love that is real, unconditional, and timeless. How can you celebrate this on one side of the street when the women directly across are faced with a very different reality of “love”? Here I was, standing on this corner listening to a song about love, when these women might not even know what love is. For them, being loved looks like having a price tag slapped across them and being chosen out as the woman a man wants to use for the night. Maybe he says he loves her, but he’s gone in the morning, and it’s on to somebody else. And it breaks my heart to realize that this is what they get of love when there is so much more to be had.
One simple song made me realize how wide the gap is between what love can be and what it is for so many people trapped in prostitution. The anger I felt turned to sadness for both the victims and the buyers; instead of blaming the men, by heart broke for them too because they must feel terribly empty themselves and have awful things happening in their lives to make them believe this is the answer. It’s so easy to lose hope, to think that a problem like this is far too big to ever fix. It’s hard to believe that anything we do could make a difference in the midst of an injustice that is so great. It’s easy to give up when situations like these break our hearts… but we can’t because there are people like these women starving for a real kind of love. And so we keep going, we keep pressing on to show them the love a Father who says,
I have died just for you, I’m waiting for you
My child, don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for forever more.
And if this is the only love these people ever know, it’s still worth it. Because at the end of the day, it’s the most real love that exists. It’s the only love that is truly unconditional and timeless. It’s a love for Valentines Day and every other day until forever. And it’s enough reason to have hope, even in the midst of a broken world.
