So sometime in the middle of 2020, I decided to cut off all my hair. I wanted to shave my head, but the hair stylist that I went to was genuinely confused when I asked her to shave my head, and couldn’t quite bring herself to do as I asked.
I cut my hair in part because a guy had once told me specifically, not to shave my head, and in part because the long hair was a lot of work considering that I was living in the middle of a pandemic, and not going anywhere. So I cut it off.
I honestly just didn’t want to look like a woman – or society’s idea of what a woman should look like, I just wanted to hide myself in boyishness, because for sooo many years, my body was not mine. Men have a habit of touching it, groping it, or raping it, without my permission, or stopping to consider how their behavior would affect me.
Even one of my closest teachers, a man who I considered to be a teacher, couldn’t stop himself from grabbing my breast, and that was almost worse than being raped because I trusted him. I respected him and I enjoyed spending time with him, and he rejected my friendship in favor of being a predator.
Then I decided that I wanted to stop living in fear of men, and started realizing that somewhere inside I was still there, so I dyed it purple.
I want to embrace self love, I want to love myself more than I worry about whether or not other people love me. So this month I am starting my brand new project, the Lost Love Diaries.
I lost so much of myself trying to hide from men, I lost so much of myself trying to appeal to men, I did everything I could to get them to leave me alone, while trying to find a guy to marry, and I realize now that the person I want to be with, is not someone that I am going to find while I am only being half of myself.
For the next fifteen weeks I am going to be making vocal recordings of my progress. I don’t fully know what I am going to talk about on each episode, but what I do know is that I am doing this specifically so that I can track my progress over the next fifteen weeks.
Each episode is going to be about fifteen minutes long, and they will only be available on Patreon. I wanted to add something to my Patreon followers that can’t be found anywhere else on the internet, because their support means the absolute world to me.
I feel like I am building a staircase, and these podcast mini’s are the next logical step. When I first started my Patreon account, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it, or what I could offer. It was a conversation with my psychiatrist that triggered the inspiration.
I am excited about this project, but I am also nervous about it, because it’s not just a behind the scenes audio recording of my life, it’s me forcing myself to actually do the things that I am always talking about. The recordings are my way of keeping me accountable, of forcing me to actually put in the physical work.
For too long I’ve been focused on the emotional, and I’ve gotten comfortable in this stride, and now it’s time to shake things up and get uncomfortable, so that I can keep growing.
I am excited about this project, but I am also nervous that people won’t see the value in what I am trying to do the way that I do, but then again, we roll around to not caring what other people think, it’s not about the audience, it’s about me emotionally checking in with myself.
Normally I find ways to wrap the end of my posts around the start of my post, but this time I am just going to say that if you’d like to check out the Lost Love Diaries, you can join me on Patreon for as little as $10.00 a month.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 