A Letter To The Man Who Saw The Woman Beneath The Beast Dedicated to @WordsBySC

Growing up I knew a LOT of men who saw a broken animal and used what they saw to cause more harm than was necessary, than was appropriate.

Throughout my social media life, even before Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and many others existed, I have met a few really good men in my life.

One of them is Barrie Hall who I’ve written about before, but another is my friend Stephen. Stephen is a published author, a father of an army of children, and a husband to a beautiful woman who struggles with different degrees of health in her own right.

Yet through it all, Stephen has found it in his heart to support me. I am writing this specifically because I just read this page, a page that I had asked Stephen to write when I first started this website.

I asked him to write it because I didn’t know what to say about myself. I am NOT a mental health guru and where I was when I started this website was literally at the bottom of a mine shaft filled with garbage and bullshit stuck inside my head, that I really thought I couldn’t escape.

I had a whole bunch of thoughts that I didn’t know how to organize and I didn’t know what I wanted to say because there was just too much of it all. Stephen took what he knew about me, and he did his work to write a beautiful piece of prose that describes the person I want to be very much, for men like him.

In a very real way I am in love with the way that he sees me, because no one has ever looked at me and told me that I was someone they admired before, instead most of the people in my life smiled cutely, called me kitten, patted me on the head, and told me that I’d get there “one day,” or worse to “get over it.”

No one ever really took the time to get to know ME before, but Stephen did. He took the time to see someone who felt completely and totally broken, and used his words to inspire me to believe that I COULD be the person that he thought he saw, and now I am sitting here thinking…damn…I am kind of a wolf.

My entire life has been spent keeping a record of, and finding the men who hurt me, and that was done, both by myself and by others who wanted to help, and now I can sit back and say that I am done with that part of my life.

Looking in the mirror over my own shoulder, I see the road behind me, filled with people with people who are convinced that I will remember them as long as I live, and in all honesty, I am starting to lose focus when it comes to them.

Now I am looking forward to meeting more people like this wonderful, kind, supportive human, who wants to see those who he cares about lift up. He actively works to ensure that his friends know that they are supported, and he does his best to ensure that he is the best possible human he can be for others.

This is a writer, a friend, a lover, a husband, a father, and a teacher in his own right, and I am grateful that he was the one to show me that not all men hit and abuse, even though someone else said it first, STEPHEN is the one who proved it to me.

Thank you Stephen for being my friend, for supporting me, and for always being willing to read what I write, even though I can’t afford to pay you. I love you so much.

If you would like to meet or follow Stephen and his journey you can do so on Twitter here, and at his website here.

Devon J Hall