I absolutely do not want anyone from my past, to be a part of my future. With a few key and very rare exceptions, I have kicked out everyone from my life, and the more that I think about it, the more that I realize it was absolutely the right decision.
Recently an old friend reached out, and as much as I love this person, the truth is that we’re not as close as we could be, and a lot of that comes from my own bitterness. I stopped reaching out and asking questions about their life a long time ago, largely because I learned I was never going to get any honest answers.
There’s always half a story, half a truth, but never the full story, which often leaves me confused and questioning everything I know about this person.
This is someone who I have never, and I mean -never- known to be single. They are almost always in a relationship, in this particular case this person got married, didn’t tell any of their friends, and is now in the process of getting a divorce…but they absolutely have a new boyfriend.
-Sigh-.
This person is someone who doesn’t know how to be alone, and the reason that it bothers me so much is because I used to be the same way. I didn’t advertise my status, but I always had a guy somewhere tucked away in the shadows. Whether online or off, very few people met the men in my life, and the reason for that was because I didn’t want the fucking drama.
On the occasions that people did meet the men in my life, there was always drama, there was always confusion, there was always me standing in the center going “what the fuck?” so I became pretty quiet about my relationships pretty quick. Ironically not one of the relationships or encounters that I had, where the guy did meet my friends, was serious. So take that for what you will.
I am looking at my phone, waiting for this person to respond to my very obvious “where the fuck have you been?” text, and I am realizing that I am tired. I am tired of sitting around feeling like “I” am the bad guy who walked away when I know for a fact that staying around these people would have ended in my suicide.
As much as I love some of the people in my life, I realize now, how much I let so many of them walk all over me, and frankly I am just not about that life anymore. I am a whole new person, they haven’t even met this person. I have perfected the “Brown Girl Bark”, hah, I’ve learned that I can be myself and I don’t have to give a fuck about what anyone thinks about me.
I’m not interested in going back to making myself small to make other people big. I did that for thirty-six years, and I am not doing it anymore, and furthermore, I am not interested in seeing who those people have become in my absence.
I’m sure they’ve grown, I’m sure they’ve adulted or learned to adult or whatever, but I just don’t fucking care? Like it doesn’t matter to me. The person I used to be, and the person I am are so fucking different, that every single day I have to remind myself that as much as I might want to be, I never have to go back to being the girl who got raped again.
It’s fucking hard.
And it’s not funny. It’s difficult to remember that the girl I used to be, doesn’t exist anymore…I keep thinking if I can just do a “hard reset” on my brain everything will go back to normal, because adjusting to this new life is really difficult.
I feel like letting the majority of these people back into my life would be a huge step backwards and I am not interested in going that way anymore, and I totally get it. I didn’t think I had to change anything about my life, for years, and now I am sitting here realizing that I would rather have a house filled with trash, than a house filled with people that secretly hate me.
I’ve been hated my entire life, because of my skin color, because I’ve always been who I wanted to be, even if other people didn’t like it, for being strong, for being powerful, for being a KICK ASS BADASS Witch who doesn’t give a fuck about people who try to control my voice or who I am as a person.
I remember my friend Mike who once detailed all the things a woman had to be in order to be with him, he was sending me a message because I had shown up to hang out with him in PJs. I never considered him a guy I wanted to date, I considered him a friend, and as it turns out he was everything everyone warned me he was. A complete and total douchebag who thought he could try and control me with the power of his voice.
I ended up punching him in the face repeatedly after he wrote me a letter telling me how little I matter, and that I should just go away and leave everyone alone. No one ever made me feel as small and as low as he did, and when push came to shove, my closest, best friend at the time chose him over me.
She was shocked as shit when I ended our friendship about a year and a half later. I wasn’t even remotely surprised when the time came to close the door metaphorically in her face.
I’ve never been afraid to walk away from people but I have always resisted the urge to take back anyone who made me feel small or horrible, and I am just not comfortable doing it anymore.
So this Samhain I am harvesting my guilt for not wanting toxic people in my life and I am setting it on fire and throwing the result in the trash. I don’t need that kind of bullshit.
There is only one person from my past that I talk to and that’s because I genuinely love this person, but even with them I have my boundaries…I wasn’t always able to say no to this person, so when they asked if I wanted to hang out today, I said no, largely because I’d promised the day to my mom, but also because I am practicing the art of saying no.
I don’t have to do anything, or go anywhere I don’t want to go, I am a grown ass woman and I can make my own decisions without a man or a woman telling me what I should do or how I should want things.
My trust has been broken too many times to go backwards now.
Sending all my love to my new friends and allies,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 