Yeah, so…I found a lump in my breast this weekend. I’ve issues with my breasts for years, and for years doctors have just assigned me antibiotics and sent me home, but this is different, this is not a lump on my breast that will go away with time, this is a lump “in” my breast.
Every woman on the planet – and many men for that matter – knows what that means, and I want you to be aware that for the first time in awhile this post is about “me” not you, my audience.
I am exhausted, like terribly physically and emotionally exhausted – which isn’t different from other times, except that recently I was told that the shit that I am going through, isn’t as important as the shit other people are going through, and honestly today of all days I need to center myself.
I don’t make friends easily. I am loud, outspoken, and even when I am wrong and willing to be corrected, I still offend people, even though I am trying to be everything that everyone else wants me to be.
Yeah I do that a lot – I spend a great deal of time trying to be what everyone else wants me to be, and then I fail, and then I am often left feeling bad, because I can’t be the person that someone else wants me to be, and then they leave resenting or hating me, for not being the person they wanted me to be.
And the person other people usually want me to be is someone who is small and sad, and lonely, they don’t want me to be happy, and full, and all of my self, they want me to be half of myself, to make them feel better about my existence.
Almost everyone who hates me, hates me for trying to put a spotlight on myself, largely because they want the spotlight on themselves, and they don’t want to share. For years I thought it was just me. I thought “no I’m worthless, I don’t deserve to center myself,” but today of all days I realize that’s not true.
I am allowed to talk about what I’ve been through, what I am going through, and if you don’t want to hear it you are absolutely free to cut me out of your life, but what you are NOT allowed to do is tell me that I am too anything. I am who I am, because this is who I was meant to be, every single day of my life is about learning to be better, smarter, kinder, stronger, and faster.
You’re welcome to be apart of this journey or you’re free to walk away, but you will NEVER make me feel like my pain doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged, ever again. Especially if you are someone who calls themselves a leader, or a Queen, yeah I’m talking to you A.
My whole life people have told me to put my pain away to make other people more comfortable, and I can’t do it anymore. I can’t continue to hold onto the seriously scary, dangerous, life threatening shit that I’ve been through to make other people feel like their lives are more important than mine.
Last week I got some news, and I made a decision to walk away from a situation, and before I did that I got drunk at 11 am. I’ve never done that in my entire life, but I had so much grief, so much pain, that I just couldn’t handle it, and so I used alcohol as a coping mechanism. This is not something that I do often, and it’s not something that I am willing to turn into a habit.
The thing that I am learning about life is that some people will look at you and genuinely want to be a part of your journey, and others will walk away. For a variety of reasons, for some it’s because your journey isn’t emotionally safe for them to be a part of, and for others it’s because they could care less if you live or die, even if you would be willing to take a bullet for them.
I’ve taken a lot of metaphorical bullets for a lot of people, and now that I am looking around at my life, I am realizing that there are not a lot of people who would be willing to do the same for me, those that would, are people I’ve shoved away out of insecurity and fear, because I am too raw, and too hurt, to believe that when they say they will be here, they actually will be.
Best to just toss them away so that when they aren’t here when I need them, I can say “see? I told you so.” I test a lot of people, it’s emotional blackmail that comes from years of brainwashing, sexual abuse, child sex trafficking, genuine physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual, torture, and all the shit that comes with abuse.
There are few people on this planet who can understand what it’s like to experience the shit that I have, and those that can are too afraid to come forward and say “me too” because there is a very real chance that they will be murdered, or worse, for speaking out about what has happened to them.
I get it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I very much feel alone. I am angry, after everything I have been through, this is one more challenge that I am not fully prepared for. The hope is that it is benign, the reality is that it’s probably going to have to be drained, and then I may or may not have to take medication to ensure that I do not get cancer. If I am lucky.
Not a lot of men and women who find lumps are so lucky, but I am hoping the universe is on my side, because as much as I know that I would survive this – I refuse to do otherwise – the idea that I have to go through this is really frustrating.
Isn’t it enough? Isn’t it enough to spend your whole childhood being neglected while the boys and men in every neighborhood you’ve ever lived in turn you into a child sex slave? Isn’t it enough to have survived without murdering anyone in revenge, isn’t it enough to have survived all this shit, just so that I could be the loud mouth brown girl?
My whole life I’ve had to advocate for myself, I am a fighter, not because I was born to be, but because I learned to be. I didn’t want to be a fighter, I wanted to be a fucking writer, I wanted to build worlds and tell stories, make people happy, I wanted them to find romance and fall in love, I wanted them to go on adventures in their minds inspired by whatever it is that I write, but instead I am both a writer and a fighter, and this fighter is tired.
I don’t know that I have another round inside of me, I don’t know that I have it in me to do this anymore. I’m not saying I want to kill myself, but I do just want to go to sleep until it doesn’t hurt anymore, until I am not tired anymore. Until it feels better, until the painful grip of my past releases the fuck out of me so that I can go and do the things that I want to do.
I don’t want to lose my fucking hair.
I don’t want to cut my breasts off.
Annoying as both of these physical attributes are, I’ve had them my entire life, and I don’t want to fucking lose them God damnit, I don’t want to give up what’s left of my life to fighting this battle, especially when I know that I won’t have anyone to hold my hand, hug me, or tell me that it’s going to be okay.
I don’t typically complain about that, given how many people I have deliberately or indirectly pushed out of my life, but I’m human, and no one gets through life with a decent quality of life, without having someone in their corner, right?
Today I am feeling sorry for myself, and honestly that is something that I do a lot in private, but it’s not something that I often do publicly. I try to – though I don’t always succeed – to measure how much I talk about my own problems, but I figure that if I can’t talk about it here, where I have talked about everything else under the sun, where else can I possibly talk about it?
Whether you like it or not, this space – Loud Mouth Brown Girl – is my corner of the world, so I feel justified in putting down how I feel, here on this blog.
I feel better having purged all of that, having released it into the universe on the off chance that God may be reading.
I have always had a quiet admiration for those who experience the journey with breast cancer, male or female, I think that what you do – not just fighting the cancer, but then advocating for others who are taking similar journeys, is absolutely amazing. Never more so than today.
I suppose it’s time to actually quit smoking though, damnit.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 