“That Decision Can Wait…But Right Now I Have Work To Do” Age Nine, Devon J Hall

Alberta is a strange place, filled with majick, and majestic greenery, there are wild blueberry bushes and pussy willow trees growing in all kinds of places, and every corner has a story, a memory, or a reminder that there was entire nations that lived there before those that do currently.

There are soldiers, politicians, teachers, friends, allies, and then there are enemies, and the enemies are very good at convincing you that you are alone, their lies are well told, and their souls are sold by age eight because it’s easier to join the light side and pretend to be the good guy, instead of joining the darkness and admitting that you’re a broken piece of shit.

In Calgary, I was raped in the school girl’s locker room, and my own belt was wrapped around my neck, and used to threaten me. When the principal asked me about it, I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t have the dictionary I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know the words to describe the terror, and the violation, and I can still feel that belt wrapped around my throat.

I can still remember the way that they woke me up when I passed out and continued raping me, I can still remember everything around me going black, and I still remember when I woke up, EVERY single adult around me, pretending that it didn’t happen.

It took me years to find that memory, and the reason it took me so long is because first in last out, when it comes to memories. Our memories of shame, abuse, and trauma get buried underneath each other, they pile on top of each other, until you can’t know what is up and what is down anymore.

That’s the experience that I’ve had to this point, and I wonder today, literally sitting here thinking, “Do you want revenge? Do you want to find them again, hunt them all down and murder them?” Or the opposite side of that, “do you want to move forward, do you want to push through the slog and the darkness, until you can peel back the layers of success that you were convinced you didn’t want by abusers who were afraid of what you’d become?”

I spent years thinking that if I just buried the pain and the trauma that it would dissipate, I forgot you gotta set that shit on fire, light it up and set yourself free from the hold that it has on you.

It takes a lot to literally sit down and go through every memory you have, believe me I know, and they don’t always come when you want them to, and they certainly do not come in an order that is conducive to you feeling your best all the time, not in my personal journey, but eventually if you want to do the inside work, they show up, and then you have to deal with how you feel about what you know happened to you.

You can deal with it by sharing it with others, or by hurting yourself but whatever you choose to do, I suggest choosing the option that is the most creative, the one that brings you the most peace. My friend Jana said that, my best friend actually, the one who helped me decide that on THAT particular day in THAT particular spot, in THAT particular place, I / we, were not yet ready to die.

We decided together to keep fighting, and even though yes, as all things with young people do, we DID go our separate ways, I think that we’ll see each other again one day, and maybe we’ll sit over some tea and just stare at each other and whisper “holy shit,” because maybe we will have found a way to survive and to make something of our pain, if not together, than maybe simultaniously.

I’m sitting here and I am trying to decide, “what kind of life do you want Devon?” I’ve been influenced by John Dillinger but just as equally by Francis Shea, I’ve thought for years about the kind of revenge that I might get one day. I’ve followed the journey of Fast and Furious for years, wanting that thing that I didn’t think I have, because I couldn’t see past the darkness and the perception of broken glass in my eyes.

I thought about the days I am standing with 50 Cent sipping Champaign, laughing charmingly while in the back of my head I wonder if the boys who raped me in that shower stall are dead yet, smiling to myself as I get the confirmation that yes, yes they fucking are, and then going back to my evening as if I had a secret that no one else in the room would be stupid enough to ask about.

In my head I hear a voice whispering “yeah, okay, buuuuut…….” and I’m laughing because but what? What is wrong with IMAGINING the death of those who tried to destroy you before you were 13? No one SAID I was acting out my fantasy’s.

At 13 I started to REALLY believe in the majick of the world, and simultaniously moment that someone pointed out that “I” might be majickal I put my head down and said “no I’m not, I’m trash.” (I think Lindsey said that to me when we were in 9th grade….she always was a nasty little cockroach, and no matter what she may say about me in the future, I’m betting she’s changed a lot.

The truth is that I WAS someone who thought of themselves as trash because every single person around me kept proving time and time again that not only did my experience on this earth not matter , not only did they want me to see the WORST of themselves, they nearly convinced me that it was my fault.

I am still haunted by ghosts of the past who think they matter, they want me to feel bad, for however their lives turned out, because they can’t fathom that THEIR behavior is the reason that their lives turned out the way that it did.

I spent years thinking that I was nuts, and every time I thought I could trust someone they either:

• abused me in some horrible fashion that destroyed our friendship, relationship, or connection
• or defended someone who did the above, thinking that that was neither as bad as I said it was, or as it could have been.

Now I am sitting here in my messy living room after spending the first half of my 7:30 am morning being so fucking angry about what was done to me, asking myself why NO ONE else seemed to care, why NO ONE else seemed to be as angry as I am currently, about what was done to me, and yes, to soooo many others.

There are times in my life I’ve sat around talking out loud to myself trying to make a decision, or trying to understand something, and then every once in awhile I’ll say something, but I won’t always know what it means.

Today’s decisions were simple:

• Kill them all hunt each and every one of them down and destroy their lives while making sure the world knows EXACTLY who they are, and what horrible awful things they did
• Become rich and famous and build your own empire while systematically burning down the one that allowed them to get away with what they did for so long
• Build your empire and burn the past, you don’t need it anymore.

There are some things, some people, and some places from my past that I will always love, and others that I will bring with me, because I can’t imagine not having them in my life, but I am ready to move on now. I have pulled what I needed from my past, and from the junk inside the attic that is my brain, and “I” am ready to move on.

“I am not Death, I cannot control whether or not someone lives or dies, and right, Mousema, would I even want to? In some cases….I think yes, often, but then I think about YOU in particular, and our “situation,” and all I can think is…I never want to do anything that would hurt you, no matter how much….what happened hurt me. I want you to be happy I want you to be loved, I want you to find someone to spend your life with if that’s what you want, I want your dreams to come true. That doesn’t mean that I want people like the one you and I both know, to ever hurt anyone else again, so that situation….well Karma will decide what happens there, I wash my hands of it, and of your family. “

That’s how I feel a lot about my past, and as I look toward my future I can’t help but smile because as has been routine throughout my life, the 1 person who has ALWAYS had my back, is still there. My future self, maybe my oldest self? My most majickal self? Or some combination of all is still there, still guiding me, still showing me that there is a better way that violence.

I don’t have to hurt myself anymore. I don’t have to hold onto grudges, and I am not at “war” with the world anymore. I have people for that. I have a support system, I have people who are willing to be angry on my behalf so that I can focus on moving forward.

The most interesting thing that I’ve learned about childhood abuse after going through my memories, is understanding that it’s not just adults that are the worst behaved. A lot of times in “my” case, it was children that were abusing me. Because they had been taught by ADULTS that it’s okay.

The things that were done to me would amount to child pornography and child torture if I were to write about them, so I legally cannot, but what I CAN say is that it wasn’t normal behavior, it wasn’t human behavior.

People think that I am “used to,” being treated like a victim, but that’s not actually true. Being treated like a victim is a fucking anomaly, literally no one I have ever met has ever believed that I went through all the things that I did, I have to find ways to continue to show them, so that they know how to protect their own kids.

Being “treated like a victim,” means that people support you. That they understand the words that are coming from your mouth, they understand the pain, and they are willing to carry some of it for you. It means understanding that when you’re ready you’ll get those parts of you back, so that you can process and deal with them as you are able.

I had to lose my mind before I was ready to process them each because there were so many BAD memories, so many TERRIBLE EVIL photographic memories, that my brain broke. It took me more than twenty five years to recover from what was done from me, and no you stupid annoying creatures. I AM NOT RECOVER(ED). I am not “HEALED,” I am just stronger today than I was yesterday.

I am afraid that I am becoming numb to what was done to all of the people I knew growing up, #MeToo is publicly started by Tarana Burke, but secretly billions of us have been screaming those two words for centuries.

There are people on this planet who will try to tell you that when you get revenge by any means necessary, your actions, yes YOUR actions, outweigh the crimes of the perpetrator. I will never believe that this is true, but what I WILL say is that there is a better way than going and shooting up a school, or abusing other kids because you think it feels good when really that “good feeling,” is a lie.

Abuse is an ugly lie, and it’s done by people who can’t fathom that you can have good sexual feelings without causing harm to others, because it’s not the touching you part they get off on. It’s not feeling themselves inside of you that turns them on, it’s the pain that they cause. It’s knowing that – or rather BELIEVING that wherever you go, you will never forget them.

Do you know why they don’t matter enough for me to remember their names? It’s because they don’t matter. I am exactly where I am supposed to be, I don’t have to carry guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety, and it’s NOT because I have an army. It’s because I am who I am meant to be, regardless of what they HOW they tried to derail my future.

I am STILL the Loud Mouth Brown Girl. Every single post, no matter which version of me wrote it, still has MY name at the end of it, and you know what? That’s my revenge. THAT’S my fuck you to each and every single one of them.

Because I’m a writer, a story teller, a creator, a weaver of dreams and nightmares, because I can transcend time and space by taking what I see into my mind and using it to create a body of work that shows the world how I think things “MIGHT” be if I’d made different choices…I’m the other kind of evil. I have no regrets.

All my love,

Devon J Hall

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