Why Couldn’t You Be Better Men? A Letter to the Gangsters of British Columbia. #CdnPoli

No artist has ever created anything without having some kind of a breakdown at some point. Painters especially, I feel like will understand this. When your art comes in any other form other than the English language, you end up putting so much more emotion into it.

Painting is like that when you’re mixing the colors, placing the paint on the canvas. You’re trying to say something without using a single English word it’s harder to communicate what you’re thinking or feeling, and so you end up putting all your feeling into the work.

And when you step back and look at what you’ve created, sometimes it breaks your heart, because you didn’t know you were feeling all of “that”.

Today for a new book project for Surrey Shares, I had to sit down and write down the Loud Mouth Brown Girl origin story, and it’s fucking hard. It’s hard to open those wounds again, to talk about how this beautiful thing I’ve created got started.

It’s a raw story if you remember, and I still feel a lot of different ways about the reason I started this site, it’s a great story. One day when I’m rich and famous they’ll make movies about the shit I had to survive to get where I am today.

I sat here for a moment when I submitted the story, said nothing, and then screamed “why couldn’t you be better men?” I want you to hear me as I write this. I loved you, I trusted you, and you tried to murder me, because someone TOLD you without proof that I was a rat, so they could take my place. Because someone BELIEVED I was close enough to you to give them a sense of power and entitlement. NOT because it was ever true.

I’ve been watching quietly as one gangster after another shoots another, all over the province and the country gangsters are dying, being arrested, and taken into custody and every single day I wonder why the fuck it’s not YOU, I have my suspicions but I know better than to accuse you without proof so I’ll say this instead. I hope you get your Karma.

All these years later I am STILL fighting to prove that I am stable, still fighting to save my own life while you carry on like you didn’t completely alter and irrevocably destroy my entire life with your actions, because who the fuck are you?

Gangsters ruin everything. They will stomp all over you and then tell you that it’s your fault when you get up and walk away, and no matter what you do to escape you’ll always hear their voice whispering “I love you,” which feels more like a threat than it does a kindness.

I am tired. Every single day. I go to bed every single night and I say a single prayer hoping you don’t come through the door deciding you need to murder me for clout because I dared to escape you because I walked away and said goodbye. I did everything right, asked permission, left a gift, and walked away so why won’t you leave me the fuck alone?

Why do I take cabs everywhere I go? Why do I refuse to go anywhere alone? Why am I always looking over my shoulder? Why do you crowd every single thought and send me nightmares at night? Why do I suddenly scream in the middle of the night when I never used to before? Why am I always so fucking petrified that I am going to die before I get to do something great? Because you’re a fucking piece of shit, that’s why.

You don’t care about anything other than how you look, all you will ever care about is whether or not people are afraid of you because the way you’re going that’s the only way to live, and douchbag that’s no way to live. Grow the fuck up, be better men than the men you had in your life, change the world. God knows you’re smart enough, God knows you have potential, talent, you have everything you need to succeed in my world, but you won’t even try because dope, guns, and gangs are more important to you.

Prison more important than your kids? no? Then why the fuck do you keep going back? Jails, Institutions, and Death. That’s the life of a gangster. Even the small joy you’re going to get out of life will be interrupted by cop sirens, by gunshots, by the people you love dying or running from you because they know you’re going to do exactly what you did to me one day to them.

How can anyone in your life trust you? You steal and sell dope for a living. You don’t give a fuck about anyone other than yourself, because you don’t know how to care, it’s not because you weren’t taught how to be better men, it’s because you CHOSE not to be better men. Being better men requires work, requires actually being honest, and you don’t know how to do that either.

I used to feel sorry for you. But you tried to murder me.

I would have done anything you asked because I loved you. But you tried to have me murdered.

I would have let you in, but you gave them a reason to want me dead. You stole my family from me because you were tired of selling dope in the same place you sold dope for twenty years. Now you got all the access to guns, drugs, guns, and girls you want, and you’re still the worst piece of shit that God ever did create.

A lot of gangsters are dead right now, many in prison around the world, yet you’re still out. I wonder why that is. Why is Karma ignoring you? Perhaps she has something special planned for you, I don’t know, I don’t care, the only question I have for you is why couldn’t you be better men?! What made you so cold and cruel to the ones that love you?

You demand loyalty but you give none. You demand respect but you don’t even know what that word means, you can’t possible if you could do what you did to me and still sleep through the night.

You have no idea what hustle means because you’re hanging out in the same strip club you refused to go to ten years ago because it’s the only place that wants you. I don’t feel sorry for you. You deserve this. I don’t. I hate you. I will never forgive you. Forgive yourself.

I AM going to change the world. YOU are never going to change because you don’t know-how. I deserve better than you, and I AM going to get better than you. You will not break me. You aren’t good enough.

Devon J Hall