I’ve been sitting here for days trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with me, because y’all know if you’ve been reading for awhile, there are usually two-three new posts on the site almost every day, if not daily at least weekly.
These last couple of weeks I haven’t felt like writing. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything, and at first I thought it might be my medications, because they do hinder my ability to be as creative as I would like. However I think what it really is, is the fact that we are being inundated with bad news lately.
Sometimes when I go to sleep I feel like I am covered in a weighted blanket, but instead of it being warm and comforting, it’s heavy, cold, and filled with dread.
There is so much happening in the world, and as any trained Empath can tell you, for an untrained Empath it can be incredibly overwhelming. I am overwhelmed.
Part of it is that I haven’t been sleeping well, and that comes from knowing that Keith Rainiere is going to jail for one hundred and twenty years. I am celebratory, don’t get me wrong, the bastard deserves to rot in a pit in the seventh level of hell.
You’d think that would make me happier, but it’s only made me hungrier, I want the men who raped me to face justice, I want them to know what it feels like to be naked, drugged up, and afraid. I want them to understand that they put the fear of God into me, and that there is no coming back from the monsters they created that last night.
I know however, that is not going to happen, so Keith Rainiere going to prison for 120 years feels like a bigger win than I deserve, even though I know I deserve all the wins I can get right now.
This feels like a message is being sent to men who rape women and young girls, and boys for that matter, because there were boys in my circle that were raped too…I have to remember that fact. Even though they were grown ass men who raped me…they were children once, who were raped too.
I have a hard time networking the two, it’s hard to separate the fact that they were once victims, from the fact that they became perpetrators.
I have a lot of anger inside of me, and I feel like these last couple of weeks that I haven’t been writing, have been about trying to get control over my own brain, which is difficult when you deal with severe untreated, undiagnosed, mental health issues.
The problem with a “Psychotic” diagnosis, is that it incorporates a lot of illnesses without actually telling you what is wrong with you. Sometimes I am absolutely convinced that I am Bi-polar, and then sometimes I think I am just emotional due to trauma.
Sometimes I think I have a personality disorder, because sometimes I feel like one person and other days I feel like someone else entirely. I can’t figure it out on my own because I don’t have the training to diagnose myself.
I am trying to work with my Doctor, but the problem is that the medical care I receive from the government isn’t the best, and it sometimes feel like they just want to know I am taking my meds, without caring about anything else that’s going on.
There are so many issues that come with sexual abuse and trauma and I think the reason that I haven’t been diagnosed with just any one thing, is because Doctors just don’t have enough information.
So many of us don’t share our stories, we don’t talk about the emotional damage that is caused after abuse, largely because we feel afraid and scared. We’re afraid that people are going to call us weird, broken, damaged. We’re afraid that we’re going to be seen as “less” then we were before the abuse started.
The truth is that there is more of us after abuse, we shatter into layers upon layers that make up a whole new person and when we peel back those layers we discover parts of ourselves that we didn’t know existed.
I’m not saying abuse is a good thing, I am saying that it’s a fucking terrible, awful, shitty, horrible thing, that teaches us that we’re stronger than we realize.
Last night I curled up and cried and I remember thinking “so and so” was right when he said that it doesn’t get better, but then I remember that he gave up, he let the darkness swallow him whole, and I am still fighting against that side of myself.
I am still here, and so of course it’s difficult, because if it were easy then I wouldn’t get the preparation I need to be the best version of myself.
It’s difficult, but I know from watching others follow their dreams after trauma, that it’s possible, it’s just not going to be easy.
Here’s to the ones still fighting,
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 