“High school sucked. It was a universal truth, and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional.” ― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness
They were lying. People who said that high school was great for them, are the people who were busy making that fucking hellscape the worst place on earth for everyone else. That’s a dimensional universal truth, and I know this because I was both sides of the spectrum.
There were times when I was kind, and times when I was downright fucking awful. There were times that I tried to be funny and it came out as an insult to someone’s race, and there were times I wanted to punch a bitch for telling me that I was the “right kind of Brown,” while my Indian counterparts were not, because of their accent, and their “smell.” For the fucking record? The smell that travels through the world on the backs of Indian people who live in Indian homes? Is wonderful. It smells like Adventure and Majick, like a world I have yet to see but cannot wait to visit.
I grew up watching John Hews movies, so I knew that there were two totally different truth to those films:
- Diversity wasn’t something that John Hews really understood, but he tried to show that he cared enough by always making sure there was at least one person who was of “exotic” culture in his films.
- No matter how bad the white kids had it, the “exotic kid’s” experience was always worse, because while everyone focused on and paid attention to the poor little white girl with her white girl problems, everyone ignored the colored problems.
Everyone who has ever seen a John Hews films has their romanticized version of how important or unimportant those films were to their lives, but very few people understand what it feels like to know that in the 1990s, you didn’t exist in Hollywood, and because you didn’t exist in Hollywood, around the world, people treated you like you SHOULDN’T exist.
Because I “shouldn’t exist,” I was treated like crap, like many of you. “How dare you take up my space with your free self, with your wild curls and your refusal to be ashamed of not wearing shorts under snap away pants that SHOULD NEVER BE TOUCHED WITHOUT PERMISSION EVEN IF YOU ARE A GIRL, especially then.
The principal who thought it would be a good idea to get the new kid labeled as a rat, by bringing her into his office while trying to convince her that Johnathon Bacon was a drug dealer (who?) and that you should testify to the fact that you saw him selling drugs on school property. Yes, this fucking happened. In later years John Bacon became the John Dillinger of British Columbia, one of the most famous now dead gangsters that lived in my time. Yeah, my Principal did that shit. I almost got my ass kicked. Asshole.
The idea that I MIGHT tell because people “saw” me go into the principal’s office, followed me my whole life, it’s the reason that I got gangraped that last time, and nearly murdered. It’s the reason that this blog exists, Highschool IS important and it DOES affect your whole entire forever life.
But what they don’t’ tell you is that high school really does prepare you for the world by destroying every fucking thing about you, so that you want to end your own damned life.
It’s 2021 now and we’re in the middle of a world wide pandemic, and people are acting like this is an ordinary because cars can’t fly….on the open market.
One day flying cars will be ALL the rage, but today it’s at the earliest possible stage of the industry, and so only a few corporations have access to these futuristic disasters that are LITERALLY going to destroy the planet.
I mean we’ve come a long long way in all these years, but the ways in which we treat each other? That hasn’t changed.
While all the people of my past are watching over my shoulder, I am thirty five steps ahead, shaking my head as they try to claim the parts of me they think they earned as they were trying to destroy me.
From co-workers to random strangers, there are always going to be people who try to make you feel like absolute garbage so they can laugh and say “guess what I did?” except they won’t say it out loud because it’s not “actually cool,” to be an asshole, but sometimes it feels good right?!
There was a film made recently about the life of the family of Jaden Bell, he was a Lady Gaga Fan who promoted LGBTQ2+ love on social media, and promoted the idea of self love and hope for a better world.
Jaden took his life years ago, and now there is a film being made about his father, and while I don’t know the man, and I don’t know Jaden’s story in full, I am not sure how I feel about that.
People who are different are often ridiculed, harrassed, abused, and traumatized for BEING different, and then people who “knew us”, when we were here, get to tell THEIR stories when we’re gone, but there is no one to tell OUR story because the only people who CAN tell our stories, are dead.
No one on this planet will know you better than you know yourself, and no matter what anyone says, no matter how many parts they try to take away from you, or how much credit they try to take for your existence, the only thing that matters on this fucking planet is that YOU know who you are.
- Dance, naked in front of a mirror, I don’t care who you are, if you turn up the tunes and dance naked in front of the mirror you cannot be depressed. It’s impossible to see your body parts flopping around and not laugh at yourself, and being able to laugh at yourself feels AMAZING.
- Paint, draw, and let yourself sink into the ART of being artistic. There are plenty of people who will tell you that you can’t do what you want to do, and you’ll listen sometimes because you want to fit in so you feel less lonely, but if you’re surrounded by people and STILL feeling like you can’t be yourself, how are you NOT feeling lonely?
- Drink if you must, smoke if you want to, but enjoy the art that you are creating simply by letting the world pass you by as you become the woman you want to become?
- Set yourself free with a tattoo, a scar, a walk on the beach, down to the crossroads, or whatever you feel you need to do to remember that all you have to do to harness the majick of the dimension is BE YOUR SELF.
- Create a list of things that YOU want to do, without thinking about what the WORLD WANTS you to do, and then start ticking them off the list. One by one until you are done, and when you’ve decided that you’re “done” come back to your list and enjoy the process of processing the fact that YOU survived while everyone else was standing around wondering how.
Highschool, Like Adulthood, is filled with people with people who will sell their soul to destroy you, thinking that will make them happy, as you’re climbing in a limo and hurrying off to fulfill your dreams.
There is not one thing that anyone in my highschool life has that I want. What is theirs belongs to them, and what belongs to me, belongs to me.
I earned this, I worked for it, and I have made it a habit of NOT asking for help unless I really needed it, and now I am working on learning to train my brain to use that word as often as possible, so that when I DO really need help, I know how to ask for it.
I didn’t always, and then recently I decided to design the Stay Lifted Collection, because I wanted to raise some funds so that I could attend a Cannabis Educator’s course, so that I could maybe one day help people find their path like cannabis has helped me find mine.
Yeah some days I get knocked off my path by my past, struck stupid by all the drama of it and then I realize one very important thing:
I am not the Queen of Drama anymore. I took that fucking crown off in Narcotics Anonymous, and I have ABSOLUTELY zero interest in wearing it again.
The girl I was in highschool was the girl who was WISHING she could be me, the woman I am today is wondering what the fuck for.
I am also the person however, that understands exactly why. To my past self I represent adulthood, I represent freedom I represent the abilities and dreams that I wanted when I was in highschool but wasn’t fully ready to embrace, and that’s going to be a constant as I age.
I knew or rather met a man once at a shop who was into pornography of a certain type, but he was afraid to tell his family about his sexual identity because he was afraid they’d walk away from him and they were all he’d ever known. He was an elder man of a much older age than I, and he was absolutely beautiful.
I can’t change my skin color and BELIEVE me I have considered it, and I can’t change that my tattoos represent pain, but I CAN decide that moving forward, I am going to keep my head up, instead of focusing on what’s under my feet. What’s beneath me is not for my head OR my heart, that’s why they are above.
Michelle Obama was the FIRST BLACK FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, you think that shit wasn’t difficult? You think there weren’t aides and staff members who didn’t resent her existence in that house? You think there weren’t death threats, and probably credible ones, against her life and the life of her children and husband?
I have a photo of her hanging in my living room, and I see it every time I enter and exit this room, because it reminds me that I DO have a right to exist in this world and not because Michelle Obama exists, but because “I” fucking exist in this world, whether you like it or not.
Some kids get that right away, and some kids take a lot longer to figure it out, because they are inundated with the idea that they shouldn’t exist, as they are without traumatic interference from those around them.
Please please PLEASE, do not wait until you are in your late (late) thirties to decide that you are going to be the person YOU want to be. Make the worlds uncomfortable, be kind, be weird, be silly, be goofy.
Put your elbows out and shove people to the side (gently) if you need them to get out of your way so that you can be the person YOU need to be, to make your childhood self proud if you have to. As long as you aren’t throwing them into the fucking fire to save your own ass.
Be the class clown, the jock, the nerd, the smart kid, the happy kid, the sad kid, be whatever kind of kid YOU need to be, so that YOU can become the adult YOU needed when you were growing up, because THAT’S how you survive highschool.
You exist as you are because the UNIVERSE decided that THIS universe, needed YOU to exist, so that IT could survive, do you know how fucking amazing that is?
Be Your Only True self…No One Else In The Whole of Creation Can Be You the Way You Can Be
The greatest stories in the world from Lord of the Rings, to Star Trek and the Fast and Furious Franchise would have completely FAILED, if even one of those actors hadn’t shown up to do what they needed to do, to make sure those stories got told. Avatar would have been a complete failure if not for each and every single one of those actors putting everything they had into filming those stories.
You are the ONLY person who exists in all the timelines who can tell YOUR story, so if you’re going to sit back and let someone else tell it, then what the fuck are you doing? “He said, she said, they said, “we” said,” what the fuck did YOU say?
Whether you like it or not the people you hate the most need to exist just like you need to exist, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be a part of YOUR journey. Be yourself Damnit. Because “I”, Devon J Hall, the Loud Mouth Brown Girl, might be coming to you looking for YOUR help, to do something “I” cant do one day. Rest up.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 