Hollow Victories In Quiet Moments: I Am Still Not Ready To Die Yet

WARNING: This half of this essay was written BEFORE Smoking Cannabis

One of the things that Cannabis does is that it changes our outlook on life, and the moods that we’re dealing with when we’re feeling anxious or depressed. Today I am feeling both of those things, and so I’ve written the first half of this essay without cannabis because I wanted to be honest and authentic about what I am feeling, without the aid of medication.

Prior to reading please understand that I am feeling highly triggered by bullshit today and some of what I have to say may trigger you. Please practice self care before, after, and during the reading of this essay.

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I always make sure to write down the quiz questions and the correct answers, so that if I need to, I can go back and look at them later, and today I passed without ever even looking at my notes. I was really proud of myself until I realized that I have no one to celebrate with, and this my friends, is the result of leaving gang life, and negativity behind you. It means that you have to build new relationships with new people, who don’t understand or know your past, and who might not stick around when they find out.

Getting out of negative situations with men, is a lot like coming out of the LGBTW2+ closet, because in many ways, and in many occurrences, people who leave gangs behind die. I didn’t die….technically, I am still here, but in a very real way I still feel like I am attached to a past that absolutely refuses to let me go.

There are things that I want to do to help other women and girls get away from gang life, but right now that just isn’t my focus. I have put some feelers out to see what is possible, but honestly it’s not my 100% focus because right now my focus is where it should be, on MYSELF.

I cannot and I won’t try to help anyone else, until I finish pulling myself out of this hole that problematic, psychotic, pedophiliac abusive men, got me into. I didn’t “Choose” to be the person living the way that I do, I chose to be the person who gets to be the Loud Mouth Brown Girl, I think if I had known honestly what I’d have to go through to get where I am today…I would have chosen differently.

I don’t regret the choices that I made, but it sucks that when I look around and pick up my phone, there’s no one to celebrate with, ESPECIALLY when I know that all the people that threw dirt on me, that shoved me down, that kicked me, beat me, raped me, and hurt me, are expecting that when I finally have MY life the way that “I” want it, there will be a place for them in it.

No, there won’t be. I walked away for very valid reasons, and I am never ever going backwards, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am 38 years old and my life is not…happy all the time. There are moments in time when I have actual time on my hands to look at the loneliness, and to shake my head at the state of my life, and today is one of those moments and sure it will pass, but in this moment, it hurts. Cannabis can’t fix that, it can hide the pain, but it doesn’t make it go away.

Nothing will make the pain of abuse, and betrayal go away, except time. I am lucky that I have people around the world who support me, but I have just as many who are whispering behind my back, who are saying shit that needs not to be said, that are hoping I trip and fall. I know this because I can hear it.

I can feel the weight of the negativity, and “blocking it out,” just isn’t always possible. That’s specifically why I wrote this essay a few days ago. There are so many people in this world who will look at everything you have accomplished, no matter how big or how small, slap their name on it, and say you had nothing to do with it, and knowing that is like a knife to the gut. Or in my case, the vagina.

Because of trauma and abuse, so much of my identity is wrapped up in my sexuality, today I was speaking to my brother and he said something about how I needed to find a man to have kids with…when I asked him why it had to be a man? silence. Absolute silence.

Exactly.

I don’t know if I am 100% gay, hell I don’t even know if one day I might want to look at my body and see a man looking back, because I have NEVER been given permission to choose who I wanted to be, and I am at 38 just figuring out what that means. Yeah it takes time, but it shouldn’t take being abused to the point of everything you COULD be, being utterly destroyed, so that you can decide you want to be anything OTHER than what your abusers told you that you HAD to be.

To test an experiment, I am writing this second half of the essay AFTER smoking Cannabis and waiting four (I’m impatient) minutes before continuing to write. Just to see how my writing style changes. Enjoy the process my loves.

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I don’t necessarily want to be superstar famous, but I do want to be celebrated for the fact that I survived some of the worst shit that human beings can possibly do to each other. I want people to say “hey good job Devon,” instead of “she’s only who she is because I pushed her to be that way.”

You don’t get gold stars for being abusive assholes, and I shouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life paying for your crimes, but here I am doing exactly that. Every single thing that I do for the rest of my life, will have been trashed and tarnished by the men and boys who abused me.

I am sitting here today studying hard, and watching Lucifer, and seeing my ideas float through time and space, and wondering “can I make this happen? Can I pull this off?” and I have no one to really bounce ideas off of, because too many people think that I am too much work to have around.

That’s fine, maybe I AM too much work for you, but what are you going to be saying when I DO make my dreams come true? What will you be doing when I DO get to look back and say “holy shit I did it,” wishing you were there, but understanding why you aren’t, that’s what “I’ll” be doing, but what will YOU be doing?

You’ll be wishing I’m dead. Awesome. So you haven’t changed a single bit. Here’s the thing that no one tells you about Empaths.

TRUE empaths know that the world is out to destroy them, but they keep going, they don’t give up, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how scary it might we might be, we walk hand in hand with the Devil and ask the universe “what else you got?”

It’s not stupid, it’s how we were built. In another time, in another space, we were born to be the people that we become after our “war” is done, or in between battles.

Because of social media, because of the connections that I have made online, as hard as today was during this morning, I get “messages” that I need to see. Sometimes people will tweet something, or post something on Instagram, I can’t see it because I am not with them personally, but social media has given us the opportunity to reach out and inspire others, when all we’re really trying to do is inspire ourselves.

Before I started this post, I was literally feeling the worst that I’ve felt in a very very long time, and then my friend Agnes posted an image of Oprah yelling about cars, and it perked me right up half way through this post….well that and the cannabis….this is literally called “a sign from the universe.”

I didn’t always pay attention to those, but I do now, every day. I look at the clouds, I watch how my cats are behaving, I check my mood, I ask myself why I am angry, and frustrated, and even lonely, and I dissect my feelings, and I use what I find to help me feel better, and sometimes when I’m feeling super good I post weird shit to make other people feel better. It’s a cycle, and it’s going to go on until the end of time and whether the people who hate me like it or not, I am a part of that cycle.

I had a friend once that I had had for years, that I had wanted to be closer to than I was, that I thought I was closer to than I was…imagine my surprise when she didn’t invite me to her wedding, but guess who still expects to be there when I rise to whatever “top” the universe has for me?

These Fairweather friends don’t do it for me anymore, I don’t need people who want to walk away when I need understanding and explanations the most, only to show up I am doing well again. Imagine someone suffering from cancer, no one showing up to the chemo appointments, no one showing up to hold their hand when they are at their worst, and yet every person who WASN’T there when it hurting, wanting to be there when there’s money to spend, or celebrations to be had.

That is now and has always been my life, and I’m not even rich yet, it sucks to me, a lot, that instead of preparing for a life filled with people who love and appreciate me, I am preparing myself for a life where I have to question every relationship that I might have, before I’ve ever even had them, out of fear that any new people might shove me back into the same hole I’ve spent 38 years climbing out of.

Char told me to let my brain take a rest, and honestly I can’t remember the last time I actually shut my brain down, I think I was about five, I think I was already emotionally prepared for what was coming, that I decided “nah, I’m good.”

I just lived life the way that everyone told me to live, because it was easier than trying to decide for myself, and my trust issues, as well as my deep, complex issues with understanding what “I” want, comes from all of that.

The only reason I am feeling alone is because I don’t have anyone to tell me what to do, and the one that does often gets ignored, and there are reasons for that. I am angry, I am petty, and I am bitter, but I am also fucking tired.

When I was a kid someone told me that “one day I would get my turn to shine, but not today, so tone it down.” I was a child, a really young child, and it fucking hurt, and now I am here, trying to shine, and there are sooo many people trying to tear me down, refusing to give me a chance to be DEVON, as “I” am supposed to be, because I am not listening to their promises, lies, or abusive comments anymore.

I’ve been trying to figure out what the difference is between everyone else and me, what makes me special. I do this thing, that I have never talked about before, but I am angry today. I wiggle my fingers, and I literally whisper something like “I wish you love,” or “I wish you what you need to be happy,” and when I come home, I don’t often feel that same love returned, by anyone in my life.

On a recent show that I did that will air soon, I said flat out that fat people know how to love better, because we know what it’s like to be unloved. But so do a lot of different kinds of people. Empath people, strong people, hurting people, colored people, pale people, two spirit, one spirit or three, we all know what it feels like to be unloved.

And today, although I am feeling a LOT of love I am also feeling the weight of a lot of doors closing and that’s scary…it’s the same feeling I might have had had I been given the chance to go to college, if I’d been educated in a way that made me feel like I was smart, instead of dumb.

If I had been educated by white people or Black or colored or marginalized people as a youth, who had a genuine interest in my success back THEN, I’d be a whole different person, and today I realize that I might have had an easier go of it.

But then I’d have nothing to write about. – Siddalee Walker / Siddha Lee Saint James

That doesn’t mean that I am okay with what happened, or that I give retroactive consent to the things that were done to me, just means that I have come to terms with my experiences, new friends, and a whole new way of life, and I do not regret in any way shape or form, saying goodbye to those who came before.

They are in my past, and while I’ll miss some of them forever, Jana, will always be the one that I miss the most, because like we promised fifteen years ago to the fucking day….I’m STILL not ready to die yet.

I love you J, wherever you are, you are the reason that everything that is about to happen happens…..I can’t wait to find you again. Thank you for fifteen years ago today, reminding me not to forget, that I will always have someone to bring with me.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall