I’ve thought a lot about this. I have thought about the fact that we were all children, when we were forced to lay in a bed beside each other. I think about the fact that some of you chose to rape me, while others simply laid there wanting to talk, or remain silent.
I have thought a lot about the men who abused us, I wonder often if the treated you the way they treated me, or if I was alone in the volatile, vicious violation, that is sexual abuse. I often wonder if they beat you, the way they did me, if they isolated you, and told you that you were going to die.
I wonder if they told you they were going to come back on your 38th birthday and murder you, the way they did to me. For reference my thirty-eighth birthday is in just under two months.
I think about the fact that I go to bed every single night wondering if “this night” is going to be the night I die, I wake up every single day, being completely shocked that I am still alive.
I think about the anger you must have towards me for speaking out, for telling the world that there was a time when you were victims too.
There were times when you were victimized just like I was, but the thing is…you’re the ones that made the choice to drug me, beat me, rape me, again, as adults.
You made that choice, and you didn’t ask how I felt about it, you didn’t ask if I wanted it, you didn’t give me time to say no, and so I did what I had to do to convince you that I was okay with it, in a deliberate attempt to save my own life.
I told you that I wouldn’t go to the cops. I told the cops that the men who raped me used your names, without actually being you. I told the cops that I was recruited into a childhood sex cult when I was about fifteen, and in return they did everything they could to make me look crazy by having me diagnosed as psychotic, so they wouldn’t have to deal with it.
For the rest of my life people are going to wonder if I am crazy.
Very few people have told me that they believe me, almost no one has ever asked if I am okay. I am not okay. I am stressed, I am pulling my hair out, I am dying inside every single time I think about a man putting his hands on me or touching me.
Growing up Catholic, I was taught that “good girls” don’t have sex, I was also taught that rape means I am going to hell, because if I hadn’t done something to encourage it, it wouldn’t have happened. Granted the man who taught me that was a Priest who sexually molested me in the bank vault in the office side of Saint James Church, but still, the memory of those lessons stuck with me.
I believe that I am going to hell. I believe that God hates me, I believe with every fiber in my being that I must have done something in a past life to deserve being treated the way that I was treated until now.
Like many survivors, I am doing the work that I need to do, in order to get better. In order to prove that I am not crazy, in order to be taken seriously, but because of my former Doctor, everyone will always wonder…”is she crazy? did she make it up?”
I can’t change that, all I can do is keep moving forward. All I can do is keep pushing through the darkness, and keep on keeping on. I am doing the best that I can to get better, to make Surrey BC aware of what is happening beneath the surface.
I know there are people who would rather that girls like me continue to keep our heads down and our mouths shut, but I am not capable of that.
I will never forget watching a girlfriend of mine getting her ass kicked because she decided she didn’t want to be with a guy who thought she should spread her legs for his benefit. I will never forget that while I wanted to stop it, I didn’t, because I was warned that if I did try to stop it, it would be me next.
Men in Surrey BC have always forced women to do things against their will, they have contributed to toxic masculinity, willingly. They have become the lowest possible version of themselves, because bullying and abusing men makes them feel powerful and strong.
I am tired. I am tired all the time, I am scared, all the time. I put out a good face, but I am constantly, and consistently afraid that I am going to die. I am tired of cops who won’t listen to me, and rapists who accost me in the street to tell me that I am a dead woman.
I hate you.
I hate you because you were like me once, a victim, but you made the choice, you chose to become an abuser. You chose to hit, kick, bite, strangle, and rape me.
You took away my humanity that night, and you left behind a righteous rage, it’s there beneath the surface, seething and slow burning, because I was never given the chance to be a real human.
From the time I was five years old, I was sexually abused by white boys and men, who figured rightfully so, that no one would care. No one did. No one does.
I am traumatized every single day, my house is a mess, because I had a dream that I cleaned it, and that’s when you showed up, ready, willing, and eager to repeat the cycle of our past.
In a group you showed up in my dreams, your faces, your bodies, ready to kill me because you haven’t done the work you need to do to stop being a victim.
You aren’t victims anymore, you’re abusers. You harass, you yell, you scream, you hit, kick, and rape women, to make yourselves feel like men, but that is not what a man does. In my nightmares you call me names and tell me that you’re going to kill me. Some days I wish you would just do it, so that I can finally be free of you. In my heart I know that if you do kill me, I will do everything I can from the grave to make you pay for it.
I will not go willingly. I will not let you take what is left of my life. I will not give you power over me. I will not allow the fears that you induce to stop me from saying the things that I need to say.
There are too many women in Surrey, in British Columbia, too many girls, who know what it feels like to have their legs forced open and their vulnerability stolen from them, for me to shut up and go away.
Every time I speak out about what happened to us, to me, I feel the grip you hold on my legs, my vagina, my face, lessening. I feel your power diminishing, and I feel mine grow. I don’t know if God really hates me, but what I do know is that if God hadn’t wanted me here, God wouldn’t have put me here.
I believe in God, in Hecate, in Mars, and Aries, Thor and Zeus, I believe that they are watching and taking stock of the situation, and I don’t genuinely believe that they are on your side.
I think that Karma is watching carefully, and I think she knows how much I love her, but whether or not I love her is completely irrelevant. When you do bad things, bad things happen to you, right? So I have to hope and to believe that Karma sees that I am trying to put good in this world.
I want more time. I want fifty more years, I want to get married, have babies, build a career for myself, I want to buy my mom a house and take my brother to Jamaica. I want to see the world, and if you think trying to scare me into behaving is going to work, you haven’t been paying attention.
I am who I am in spite of you, not because of you. I am who I was always meant to be, and I like this person. I am overweight, I have terrible teeth because I was molested by a dentist when I was five and I am now terrified of them, but I am a good person.
I work hard, and I am dedicated to all the women of BC, and the world, who believe as I do, abusers need to pay for their crimes. I want to be part of making the changes that need to get made so that doctors and politician’s hear survivors when we speak.
I am not a victim. I was a victim, now I am a survivor, and I am not going anywhere any time soon, so if you want to kill me go ahead. You’ll just prove that everything that I’ve said is true, and frankly my dears, that’s kind of what I want. Not that I want to die, but if I have to die, so that the world starts wondering who you are, and what you did, then I’m willing to take that risk.
Just be aware that for the first time in your life, it is me giving you a choice. You can be a father, a husband, and a hard worker, or you can be a murderer who killed a woman because she said that what happened to us wasn’t okay. You became exactly what our abusers wanted you to become, but you don’t have to stay that way.
You could actually choose to do the work and be a good human, I hope that’s the choice that you’ll make, but experience has taught me that you’re a group of really stupid humans, who will make the dumbest possible choice, and continue to be abusers, because being an abuser is easier then doing the work to be a good human being.
The choice is yours, just know that if you come for me, I am absolutely ready.
Go fuck yourselves abusers,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 