In grade two or three, three I think, we had to write the every few year dumbass exam that told the province how smart, stupid, or in the middle they thought we were according to standards that our brains shouldn’t really have been able to understand.
In one of the sections we had to write stories about aliens coming to earth to pick up a little girl who was one of them, but the little girl had a brother who was fully human, and so she had to choose between returning to her space family, and leaving her baby brother, or never seeing her blood relatives again.
Throughout my life this story became a constant reminder of crippling indecision and the pure undiluted understanding that this wasn’t about the little brother.
Children are not HUMAN. They Are DEMON Spawn….I Swear there is SOMETHING not right about the CHILDREN of this world…they are too smart for our own good. – 3rd Grade Teacher
This story was about the choice between facing the child abuse that I had and was going to continue to experience, or running away from it. I didn’t understand that at the time because all I knew was that I was writing a story about a storm that started and forced the siblings into a barn where they learned the true story of Avalon Sinclair.
As I grew older the details of the story never really went away, always there in the back of my mind hidden behind all the crap that I’d been forced to use to hid the shame, fear, anxiety, and guilt that I was facing for not coming forward when I knew that I should have.
I always felt guilty for not coming forward as a child, because yes I was fucking petrified, but at my core, really, it was the fact that I was lying to everyone around me, and the small lies were covers for really, really, REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLY big lies, that literally destroyed every relationship that I MIGHT have had.
I had wonderful friends who reminded me that I wasn’t alone back then, who told me that they too had nightmares that haunt their dreams, I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do with that information. “Okay cool so EVERYONE in my third grade is getting molested? And NONE of us are talking about it? Okay, cool, so…..umm…that’s the dumbest thing ever, who do we talk to?“
Only there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Teachers who knew, or took an active part in the abuse that haunted so many of our nightmares and fears couldn’t be trusted, and frankly neither could their friends who were other teachers.
And you can’t trust cops because teachers work with cops, and on and on and on, and when you try to tell someone because you DESPERATELY want someone to help you, they turn on you, they walk away from you, because hey guess what, THEY too are abusers.
Sometimes kids act out because they just want to be noticed, outwardly they are calm as fuck, but instead of showing you their true feelings they will lie, they will steal, they will bully others, they will drop to the ground and hide from the drama instead of participating in ending it, or worse, they will actively instigate it so that you the adult will look anywhere but inside the pain.
Kids grow up thinking that they are completely alone, that they are powerless, the lessons we are taught as children are the exact same lessons we’re taught in recovery programs, the only difference is that when we DO what we’re taught to do, the adults are too busy with their own shit to care.
We used to remember this, all of us. We used to all remember what it’s like to be a kid, the anxiety, the fear, the constant need to fit in and hid secrets so people think you’re “normal,” can you even define normal? Go ahead I’ll wait.
Have you ever gone back to your childhood self just to remember what it was like to be in 2nd grade pretending to be stupid to fit in, and becoming stupid because you’re so shocked at how stupid you’re supposed to act?!
Do you know what you remember when you do that shit? I do.
You remember that no matter how old you are, you still cannot fucking count time. You know why? Because some dumbass whispered “Time is a construct,” and convinced your impressionable mind that time has no meaning and doesn’t matter, because if anyone can slide through what the fuck is the point?
Which is why you try to keep your ass planted FIRMLY in the now and here, while the abusers in your life are trying to force you to grow up too damned quickly.
That’s what you remember. That you, little boy, little girl, little androgynously beautiful person from another planet, time, dimension or space, are a fucking genius. If you are reading this right now, it’s because the UNIVERSE, WANTS you to read this.
People have been asking me for ages why I smoke so much, why it is the smoke helps me concentrate and focus my mind, and it’s because while I seem to be sitting here listening to all the horrible shit about myself all the lies, the rumors, while I get messages about whose saying or who did what I’m in the shadows laughing my ass off.
First of all I ALREADY know who did what, you know? And the thing that I forgot the thing that matters the most is that I FORGOT that I remembered, and BECAUSE I now remember all the things that I forgot I can move on to the next phase of my life.
In a recent post I wrote that my future begins in eight minutes, it’s been several days since that eight minutes was supposed to be over, and it still hasn’t begun, but in every single day that matters, it began ages ago.
While everyone around me was wondering what happened and who I am, while they were sending me dreams filled with nightmares and horrors best not read to little boys, girls, and androgynous peoples, I was already moved on. I’ve done all the things I ever wanted to do in my imagination and it doesn’t matter how much money I receive in compensation, I have experienced more love in my life time than I could ever hope to hold onto myself.
In my dreams I married my person, I had children with them, and we built a life and a family, we had jobs, and we travelled, we struggled and we laughed, we planted seeds, and we died together one after the other, him first, because I’m a bitter bitch like that.
There are days that I get so bogged down with the fact that I am “supposed” to live in the same reality as everyone around me, that I forget inside my head is the kind of world that John Malkovich could only wish he had come up with.
I wasn’t strictly speaking introduced to comic books as a kid, but I had cartoons about superhero’s, and those cartoons had a profound effect on 90’s kids. We were encouraged by some teachers to do the things we needed to do to survive, and comic book heros and cartoons were our gateway to the edcuation we needed to survive.
We knew we had to pick sides, good or evil, we knew we had to work together as a team, we knew we had to follow the rules of good vs evil, but over time those lines got blurred by trauma and abuse, and shock and the awe of it all. It took me a really long time to remember these lessons, and to sit back and ignore it when people OPENLY spat on me, because they just felt like being cruel that day.
The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies, was released in the US in 1933 and was a reprinting of earlier newspaper humor comic strips, which had established many of the story-telling devices used in comics
Now, however, I am a phenom. I am a ghost, I am vapor, I am the thing that the world refuses to believe CAN exist because no one has seen anything like me before. In that story I wrote, there was a girl who was running away from being told what to do, being told who to be, she was trying to be me, she was trying to be herself, she was trying to understand what the words “her self” mean.
Because third grade was the year that we started learning about gender pronouns and how important it was for us to choose our own. Mainly because our teacher at the time was gay, and wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Being gay by the way doesn’t stop you from molesting children, let’s not get it twisted. Child abusers don’t care about your identity, they just want to destroy it to fit their own narrative, so that they can excuse their behavior. Straight kids are not the only ones who get abused, and Straight adults are not the only ones who abuse kids.
In second grade we learned about the importance of dental care, and that year I was molested by a dentist, so I stopped going and kicked and screamed whenever someone tried to force me.
Manifesting behavior based on my emotional state became my super power, and helping OTHER people understand why I do what I do, really does explain a lot about the decisions that I make in my life.
Sometimes people will (a lot of times really) ask me to choose between two or more things, people, or places, and I find that I absolutely cannot answer. It’s not because I don’t have an answer, it’s not because I don’t want to answer, it’s because whatever they’re asking me to choose has nothing to do with what I am thinking about at the time.
Last night I was watching an episode of The Good Fight and Wanda Sykes was on it, she was playing a character who was trying to pull her mind from one thing into another in the middle of a conversation with another person. THAT is me ALL THE DAMNED TIME.
That is a trauma response, and it takes the wind out of our sails because as children we so desperately want to believe that we really CAN be anything. In third grade I wanted to be a ballerina, that was what I drew for my picture on the career wall, or at least that’s what I THOUGHT I had drawn, but looking back I honestly cannot fucking remember.
I DO remember going back to the wall and staring at the picture, but it was blank….I think I just threw some colors together, and I say that because I was sooo desperately unsure of what I wanted to do for my entire life, I wanted to do a bunch of different things. And so as I grew up, I did a bunch of different things.
If You DON’T want a child to believe in Super Hero’s, DON’T tell them, Superhero’s EXIST.
I went back in my mind last night, and I heard a cross, or I mean I heard someone tell me it was a cross, and I kind of remember that now, and I realize that a lot of people my age or in and around my age have been doing that a lot lately, it’s called remembering.
The act of telling your brain all the stuff you USED to know before your world and everyone in it told you to forget all the things that are important to who YOU want to be when YOU grow up.
We are pushed and told to compete against each other from the moment that we can walk, “my kid started talking at two, oh yeah? MY kid started talking at six months.” Parents shut the fuck up.
STOP telling kids that they have to follow the EXACT SAME EXHAUSTING STANDARDS as every kid you’re comparing them to, to matter.
It’s okay to not be able to afford to do stuff for your kids, it’s okay that they can’t afford the best supplies, it’s okay to not make them feel ashamed by reminding them every single second of the day how much something costs, or that they are too fat to fit a shirt they like.
It’s okay to cultivate a healthy body image in your child, it’s okay to NOT compete with your kid, it’s okay to NOT stomp on their dreams just so that you can make their nightmares come true so you won’t be alone forever.
Because when you do that shit eventually they learn to stomp back and not always towards those who deserve it, sometimes they stomp back at innocent people, because they’re too afraid to take on the guilty ones, and we need to teach our children better that.
It’s okay to teach our children to cultivate questions about the universe, and to create worlds in their own minds that save them from the dark times, it’s absolutely beautifully okay, to you know, not send your children to a school filled with child abusers.
It’s totally cool to make sure that you are involved as a parent and that you know when your kid is being harmed at school, and that you’re doing something about it, and more importantly than that, it’s okay to refuse to let your child forget what they have been through.
Over time the scars will heal, but if they are told to be ashamed of and to hide their scars, then they are going to start feeling as if they deserve to hide the things that caused them harm, as if they don’t, they’ll get punished even more than they did to begin with.
Because child abuse feels like a punishment, like we lied so we deserved it, or we stole a pen because we were ashamed of our broken ones, or because because because because because our 4th grade teacher is a racist abusive sociopath who singles out colored kids, and emotionally abuses them because they have no actual power in their own lives.
It’s okay not to stomp on the dreams of children because your own dreams didn’t come true, because when you do that, they absolutely will learn to fight back, and those are the most dangerous kinds of children on this planet.
Those are the kids who can read comic books and sit in groups and gaggles and laugh because they believe they actually SEE superhero’s in their first grade classroom, even though the adults in the room can’t see a single thing.
THOSE are the kids who actually BECOME superhero’s no matter what they go through, no matter how hard life gets, or how scary it can be, those are the kids who grow up to fight back against the abuses they suffered as children in droves, those the kids who become soldiers without even realizing it and focus everything they have, on changing the world they grew up in for the next generation.
Those are the kids like Kyle, Jason, Anthony, Chris and his brothers, those are the kids like Mandy, Julia, Jessica, Tabitha, and McKenzie, those are the kids who love the world and want to see it become the best most beautiful place it can be, and no matter what lies they have to tell, they will do whatever they can to beat back the flames and the shadows when they are able.
Those are the kids who believe that anything is possible, and live lives that prove it, and those are the kids that I will forever remember for the rest of my life, no matter what life or what dimension I am in.
By the way, the girl in the story? She split her heart in two and gave one piece to her brother, and one piece to the alien’s, and then she went off on her own to figure out what the hell it meant to be half human and half alien.
It’s 2021 and she’s still figuring it out. Thanks Harris.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 