September 24th 2020, I’ve Found My Place In The World

There is so much for me to be grateful for this week, I am alive, I am healthy, mostly, I am happy, and I am secure in my home. I am comfortable. I am lucky.

As I gaze out the window to my left, I can see the sky is a bright almost white gray, the rain drops cling to my window sill like a spiderweb’s silk, and all I can think is “what about the many?”

For the first time in years…if ever, actually, I woke up and the first thing I said was “Good morning God,” I realized that for the first time in a really long time, I wasn’t surprised to wake up safe and sound in my bed.

For the first time in years, I was genuinely just grateful, and happy to be grateful, with two kittens playing at my toes, gently nipping and swatting away, and I was happy this morning.

Then I remembered the many. I am talking about the many who live on the streets of my city. Who live without the conventional kind of home that I take for granted mostly every day.

I ran into an old friend yesterday, this is a person who struggles with some stuff, but who has never, ever, given up on himself. No matter how many times he tries and falls, he always gets back up again and tries again, and I remembered how much I missed them.

I miss having friends, I miss having people in my life that I care about, and I realize that I have set up myself to be alone on purpose, because I am genuinely tired of people, but by the same token I miss them too.

Catch 22.

I am thinking about the many, because there are two months before the extreme wet emergency shelters open up, and it is abnormally wet this fall.

The first day of the official fall season was filled with rain, and so will be the next several days, and there are people living on the streets and in the forests of British Columbia, without adequate shelter, and I worry about their safety.

We are still, in the middle of a very serious pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people around the Earth have died, and they had all the medical care in the world, and that couldn’t save them.

I am grateful for all that I have, and I recognize how much I had to go through to get here, but I think back to Kamala Harris’s words when she says “I am opening the door, but I am going to make sure that I keep it open.”

I’ve been thinking about what I want for my future, and I realized as I was writing this post, that a seat at the table isn’t enough for myself. I want more than that. I want to sit at the head of the table, and I want to keep the door open for Brown girls around the world who will come after me.

I want to make sure that my voice is one of the loudest, but also one of the most respected, but I also want to make sure that I learn how to make room for others. I am working on that, with every day that I do this work, that I write this blog and have these conversations, I am doing the work to ensure that I make room for others.

I am not tooting my own horn when I say that, I am reminding myself, that this is the work that I have committed to doing.

Someone suggested that I look into a training program to help me get a “real” job, that will give me money in my pocket, and allow me to write in my free time, but the thing is, this is my job. The pay is shit, the hours are fucking horrendous, and some days are filled with a mind numbing crippling fear that I am a total failure, but this is the work that I am meant to be doing right now.

This is my calling.

Sharing my thoughts with the world, in a way that I hope inspires others is all I’ve ever wanted to do, and now that I am doing it, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Maybe that’s because I spent so long not saying the things that were true and honest about myself.

Maybe that’s because I spent so long trying to chip away at the person the world forced me to be, so that I could discover who I wanted to be, but whatever the reason, this is the work that I am meant to be doing.

I can hear my former self asking “okay but how did you get here? How did you discover that?” I think the reason that no one ever answers this question fully, is because they don’t really know.

I sure as fuck don’t. I have been looking back at every day of my past for the last twelve years, and even beyond that, and I honestly have no idea how I got here.

Today I just woke up and realized “this is it.” This is the stuff that I am supposed to be doing with my life. Nothing in my entire life has ever been more right, and I am not afraid anymore.

I am annoyed by the voices that tell me that I am a failure, or that try to convince me to be afraid when I don’t want to be, I am irritated with them, but I am not afraid anymore.

I don’t care if my life ends tomorrow, because I know that I have found the place where I am comfortable being where I am meant to be, and where I am meant to be, is where I want to be, and I’ve never felt like that before.

I am going to make a concentrated effort to feel less angry, bitter, and frustrated on days when I can’t write, largely because I know now that on some days I need to give myself a break.

I hope you find this place….because it’s bloody wonderful. That being said Im stoned out of my fucking tree on Green Goddess Indica strain, so maybe that’s why I am so hopeful for the future.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall