I Hate This

I hate that I am tired all of the time. I hate that I am afraid to go to the fucking grocery store. I am afraid to buy cigarettes at the corner store, I am afraid because everywhere I go I see friends of friends who know who raped me.

A year and a half ago I posted a video in the middle of a psychotic break I made a video and posted it with some of the names of the men I know for sure who raped me….I’ve run into three of them on four separate occasions in the last year, at least two of those occasions were verbally abusive on their part.

I am tired of wondering when and if these men are going to come after me again, and I shouldn’t fucking have to, but it is apart of the reality that I am living now, because I was raped for being Black.

At the end of the day that’s precisely why these men did what they did to me, for years. Because I didn’t have a Black family of brothers and cousins to protect me, I was considered expendable, I was worthy of sacrificing to the desires of these men, because I didn’t have anyone capable of standing up for me.

As a result of holding onto the secrets of my past I had a complete and total psychotic break down, for which I was hospitalized twice.

I reported to the Police what happened to me in Vancouver, and in North Delta and in Surrey at least twice, and in return I was labeled as psychotic and told that my memories of being gang raped and raped repeatedly are dillusions.

I am fucking tired of being the victim and I am ready to move into that “Survivor” mode but I am not sure what that is supposed to look like.

To be honest with you I don’t understand what it means to be a survivor because the only ones I ever hear from are the ones that the news thinks are worthy of broadcasting, meanwhile the rest of us are left in the dark.

I feel like I am supposed to want to write a book about my experience, I feel like I should be trying to make money somehow off what happened to me, I should be talking about it on television shows and in the media, because those are the survivors that I have access to.

What I need, who I need to hear from, are the survivors who aren’t famous, who didn’t write a book about their experience, but instead found other ways to thrive along their journey. What I need is group therapy in a safe environment with women who understand what I’ve been through.

Unfortunately I can’t afford it, and I do not qualify for the Mental Health services provided by the British Columbia government.

I think that’s why I want this blog to be a success so bad, not just so that I can afford counselling but so that I can help others who are in the same boat. Tonight as I write this I am wondering about the hundreds of thousands of women and men who don’t have access to the mental health support systems they need because of lack of funding or qualifications.

I think I want to start some kind of foundation or project that puts money where it belongs, in the hands of women who need counselling and can’t get it, and while that’s a great goal I am not entirely sure how I am going to get there yet.

The idea of that gives me hope though, that I am working towards something in the future, I need to think a lot more about what that would look like and how I would go about doing it, but I definitely think that this is another item I can add to my bucket list.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall

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