I’m A Little Off Today

On days when I don’t have to do podcast interviews, my focus is on providing content for this website, or for Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Today I am not feeling so hot, I am definitely low energy, which saddens me, because yesterday to celebrate November 11th my Budsista’s got together to do a “reset ceremony.” We gathered at 11:11 pm EST, to talk about what we wanted to manifest for the rest of the year.

I said I wanted a break, which saddens me because to be honest, my life is really not that difficult, unless you count all the emotional stuff that I am going through.

I am still unpacking all the emotional baggage that I have been carrying throughout my life, I am still figuring out where I am emotionally.

I have commitment issues, and that doesn’t stop at relationships with men, it actually starts with relationships with women.

All of my old friendships with women had a power dynamic that usually left me on the bottom. People I considered friends, treated me like crap, and I usually let them because I didn’t have the self confidence to stand up for myself.

Now that I am in this place where I’ve cut everyone off, there is not a single one of them that I would welcome back into my life. Not because I am a mean horrible person, but because my memories of these women are terrible.

I am such a different person than I was when I knew them, but I still struggle with serious and severe self confidence issues.

Knowing that, I have troubles with strong personalities, the moment that I think they are trying to make everything about them, I back off and suddenly have zero desire to be around them.

This is a recurring issue with me, it comes up a lot especially when you are around a group of strong Black women who know their worth, when you feel like you are just learning yours.

The solution to this is to talk about it, to actually be honest and open with how you feel, but this can be scary when the people in your life have constantly invalidated how you feel.

Meeting new people, new friends, new Sista’s is a trust game. It’s about learning to remember that not everyone is going to stab you in the back or tell the absolute worst lies about you, just to cause you pain while they lift themselves up.

It’s a lesson that you have to constantly remind yourself of, because if you don’t, you risk losing really amazing people in your life.

Part of my problem is that I find myself consistently testing people to make sure that they are going to stick around when shit hits the fan. I am trying hard not to do that, but it’s difficult.

Instead of playing mind games and lying this time around, I am being genuinely honest about the things that I go through, in order to say “this is who I am, accept me or don’t,” but for the first time in my life I am not hiding the ickiness that I’ve been through, in order to impress others.

I am trying with my new friends, to be honest about who I am, because I never want them to be able to turn around and say “well you didn’t tell me who you are.” What you see these days is what you get, and for the most part I am a complete emotional mess.

But I am trying, every single day to get better, so I hope as you read this post, thinking that I am something you think might be worth looking up to, you understand that I do not have it all figured out yet.

I am only thirty-seven, and while I used to think that was a ripe old age, the one thing that I’ve realized is that I still have a ton of shit to learn, before I am ready to “level up” as they say.

I feel like, after I was gang raped I became this stone cold version of myself who just didn’t care about anything after that. It’s hard to care about anything when the men you care most about in the world decide to kidnap and gang rape you for hours, before waking you up hoping you forgot everything that happened.

It’s hard to believe in good people, when so many people worked so hard to make you face the evil that this world has to offer.

I am trying my absolute best now, to be the broken, authentic version, of myself, and to be honest with you I can honestly say that while I am not shattered, I am still broken in a lot of emotional places.

But I am healing, a little bit more each day, and some days as I have said before, are absolutely amazing. Some days I spend the entire day smiling, and laughing, and feeling really good about life. I am creative, I work hard, and I do what I have to do to continue the work that I am doing on this website.

But there are days when life is just fucking hard. Days when I don’t want to climb out of bed, days when all I want to do is cry, today is somewhere in the middle.

I know that the bad days are going to get fewer and further between, and I know that as I get older, and become filled with more wisdom, things will get easier, but when I look back at the girl that I used to be, I wish deeply that I could hug her and tell her that it’s going to be okay.

I’d rather have the worst day for the rest of my life, then give up not trying to find that hope everyone keeps promising exists.

A lot of that has to do with my writing, and my readers, you don’t know how much it means to me that so many of you are reading my work. It means that I am on the right path, and that’s all I need to know, to know that I am going to be okay.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall