A notification pinged on my phone.

“New subscriber.”

It was the five-week anniversary of launching my journey as a cam model. I hadn’t posted that day.

I squealed to my partner, “I just got a new OF subscriber and I wasn’t even doing anything!”

That little pop-up gave me a strange, growing feeling in my stomach, something I’ve now started to recognise as pride. When you’ve spent your life being told you’re a failure and a burden, feeling pride is a radical thing.

But it wasn’t the surprise subscriber that made everything shift.

“Just a lucky day,” I told myself.

It was simple math that made me stop, just for a second, and actually believe this might be real. “You are in the top 18% of OnlyFans creators!” an email from the platform told me. I froze. I read it again. And then I told my partner, who was watching Deadliest Catch for maybe the hundredth time, but I could see he didn’t quite grasp what I was saying.

Honestly, neither did I. Because how could I, after 36 years of chaos, trauma, and systemic failure, possibly start to be … successful?

Just three months ago, I was homeless. My local council, which in the UK is responsible for housing, benefits and other community services, placed me in a condemned house with black mould, sewage backing into the bath, no stove and no hot water. The property was owned by a sketchy landlord with numerous fines, but the council told me that if I left before they rehoused me, I’d be classed as “intentionally homeless.” That meant that even if my children and I were forced to sleep on the streets, they would refuse to find us a home. I stayed.

I didn’t start camming back then. I couldn’t have. You need to be mentally solid to do this job. If you are, you can love it. But if you’re not, it can break you.

What changed was a small inheritance, from my grandmother ― the last of three close family members to die within three years. Her money allowed me to escape the hostel, pay six months upfront on a private rental, and start over in a quiet two bedroom with a little garden.

For the first time in a long time, I had privacy, safety and stability.

I was desperate for a way to work from home because of my agoraphobia. I was considering applying for a call centre job even though I have a phobia of phone calls ― they make my skin crawl. I then asked myself: What’s really the difference between selling my energy to handle other people’s customer service rage over the phone, and selling something that’s mine, on my terms?

And then, almost without planning, I launched a business.I never watched a........

© HuffPost