I am tired.
Yesterday Michelle Guido said she is here to empower women. Not “here on Twitter” but specifically “I am here to empower women.” It got me questioning what the fuck I am doing here.
On Sunday night I was watching Madam Secretary, and I started thinking about all of the Soldiers out there in the world that is doing what they do, to protect us from weapons of mass destruction. From weapons, we don’t even have words for in the common world.
I got to thinking about all the CIA Agents and FBI Agents who are saving us from drug cartels and protecting kids from child pedo rings, and I started thinking of how proud I am to live in a world where those people exist.
I don’t believe in War don’t get me wrong, I hate it, but when I was thinking about what I want to do with my life this year, War became my power word. War because I am fucking tired of hearing shit like “what did you to do provoke his threatening you?” such as I heard from my Doctor today.
I had received a threat over Facebook from one of the men who raped me – the things he said and did were so vile that they make me sick to my stomach even thinking about ever letting another man touch me.
Now that I am sitting here, triggered as fuck by a Doctor who thinks there is anything I could do that deserves to have my life threatened, I am realizing I am here to empower myself.
I hope that what I write here helps others, I hope that what I do with my time has an effect on those around me.
I hope I am a positive influence, but at my core what I am doing this year is being selfish and focusing on myself. For a while recently I was taking that to a really dark place, anger and guilt, shame too was washing over me and I didn’t know how to stop it.
I lashed out at someone who didn’t deserve it, in a terrible fucking cruel way and I realized that I had let my demons take control again.
With all this being alone all the time, I have lost my ability to connect with other humans, and the process of trying to communicate with them leaves me often exhausted and frustrated.
I know very well that I probably won’t make a ton of money from my first book, but I am going to put everything I can into promoting the fuck out of it because it has to make enough to send me to trauma counseling. I have to be able to pay for that out of my own pocket. It matters to me, it’s part of taking control of my own life again.
If some random CIA Agent can crawl through the darkest and nastiest jungles in the world in order to find some sacred or super-secret artifact that might change the course of time…the least I can do is survive the bullshit these white men put me through.
If some elite Soldier can put his or her or their lives on the line to save and feed hundreds of refugees in some war-torn country the least I can do is survive what these white men put me through.
I can do this, but it’s fucking hard, and I am tired. I want to be in the place of empowering women to believe in themselves, I want to be in the place where I can confidently say that everything works out for the best, but I am not there yet.
Instead, I am constantly wondering how I got so fucking lucky, how can it be that after everything I went through it’s just over now? How can it be that I get to do what I’ve wanted to do my whole life? There is a part of me screaming “because maybe you’ve had enough,” but I can’t believe that to be true. That would be too easy.
I keep thinking that I am going to have to face the same challenges over and over again, instead of thinking that maybe the challenges have changed and I just haven’t noticed.
Maybe the bad times have passed I think, “but what if they haven’t?” Little whispers in my heart.
That childhood self is a drama queen and a scaredy-cat, and the unfortunate thing is that she’s so good at telling tall tales that even I started to believe them as I got older, and now I can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen.
Because it always fucking does, as soon as I start feeling safe and comfortable and protected, something comes to smash my world into pieces and I don’t know how many more pieces I can lose.
I’m trying here and it feels like a snail running a marathon, but if I remember the story correctly, it was the tortoise who won the race, not the hare.
I feel like the hare who realized she’s run out of time, I don’t know where this feeling is coming from but it feels absolutely awful. I want to celebrate the fact that I wrote a book. I want to throw a big party and invite everyone I know, even though I know only a few will probably show up.
I want to celebrate this new journey I am on, and everywhere I turn people are downplaying the fact that I wrote a fucking book, it’s really quite unfair and frustrating.
There are a few people who are incredibly excited, and I have to focus on that, because they are the ones who mean the world to me. They are the readers who lift me up when I am feeling down and thinking that this is all just a waste of time.
I know, in my heart that given enough time and pressure Loud Mouth Brown Girl will become a shining beacon, I can see it, and even in this place of absolute “what the fuckery”, I know that it’s going to be something special.
I just need more time, more time to keep building, and finding ways to branch out. I’ve set myself a course and I intend to follow it, with or without threats I am going to be okay.
Even if he does decide to have me jumped…well I mean, that will just prove my claims at the end of the day. If he were smart he’d leave me the fuck alone, but we all know that white men with inferiority complexes are very often not the sharpest tool in the shed.
But I’m tired. I am tired of having to be the one who constantly stands up for herself when everyone in the room is downplaying the fact that I did something cool. Something I’ve been saying I was going to do since I was five years old.
Do you know how few people get to live their fucking dreams? When I was five years old I didn’t see a world filled with people that adore me, I saw a little girl holding her journal knowing that one day it was going to be published.
I didn’t see a ton of fans or adulation, I just wanted to write a book so that I could say “I’ve written a book”, there were no other dreams beyond that. Wanting to become a Soldier came later, although that dream didn’t come true the way I thought it would, I absolutely became a Warrior.
Whether my mom or my Doctor or anyone else likes to admit it, I am far more normal than I deserve to be, given what I’ve gone through. Given what I had to slog through to get here, I have to hope that it was enough. Enough to just give me a few years of peace and relaxation while I write and inspire others by trying to inspire myself.
I know that I can do this, I just need time.
Won’t you please just give me some fucking time?
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 