I Don’t Want To Have To Say Their Names

Someone asked me if I want children recently and all I could think is “sure, but not on this planet!” What’s the point? What’s the point in having kids when at any moment their lives can be cut short by a white person with a gun?

I’m single and alone because the people from my past were not the kind of people I want in my present or future, but my experiences fail to give me release because I think about them every single day. I wonder if they are safe, are they okay? Do they need help? Are they as alone as I am? Does it feel as awful for them as it does for me?

I don’t want to wonder about the boys I grew up with, or if like our abusers, they chose to follow suit, I don’t want to wake up every morning feeling hands on my vagina when no one is there, because my body remembers the trauma, even when I want to ignore it.

Every single day is a battle for Black women and women of colour, and looking at my life now, knowing what I know now, I am not at all surprised that I am not further ahead in my life than I feel I should be. Another year has gone by, and due to the constant reminders of what was done to me, I am yet again, far behind where I want to be.

These constant setbacks due to PTSD and anxiety, depression and the constant fear that the broken parts won’t ever fully heal, make it difficult to continue, and yet we do, we keep going on and we keep trying to be the best versions of ourselves, because what the hell else are we going to do?

For the last three weeks I’ve been struggling with my mental health, and although I knew I’d get through it, I still had moments of serious disassociation, and feelings of “I’m never going to stop feeling this way,” and when the clouds clear I end up feeling silly and ashamed because of how tired I am. Not even from doing physical labour, but from trying to get from one morning to the next without something terrible happening.

My background is in community building, in creating groups and programs designed to help heal, but when people are constantly and consistently making the choice not to get help – something I understand well – you can’t force them to do what’s going to make their lives better, no matter how much you might want to. Everyone needs to come to their own version of health, in their own time.

And the catch 22 of that is often when we think that we’re helping, what we’re doing is being lied to, until the people we’re trying to help can find ways to cause as much damage as possible, and the cycle will continue to repeat until we break the wheel.

Canada has decided to realign some gun laws, and it breaks my heart that so many people in America would rather celebrate their addiction to killing, instead of using their strengths and powers to help the world be a better place.

It is a choice, and it’s a choice that every human has to make for themselves, and there’s nothing we can do about what other people choose. Sure, we can get violent in return, but then when does it stop? When do we put down the guns, the knives, and the death machines and actually SEE each other, for the amazing, beautiful, wise, weird, creatures that we are?

When do we start GENUINELY appreciate each other as single individual creatures? When do we start to actually practice all that “neighbour above enemy” crap that we keep hearing about? Because that’s the world that I want to be a part of.

Yesterday I posted a scathing review of a few groups in the Cannabis industry, and I’m now in a “well if they won’t do it right I guess I’ll have to do it myself,” situation, and I feel absolutely zero guilt about burning those toxic unhealthy relationships a part because I know that for me to be the best version of myself, I need to be around people who accept all of me, not just the parts of me that can support their brand or mission.

It’s a grueling process being a human, but it’s one that I find ultimately fantastically and curiously interesting. It’s like putting a puzzle together, trying to find the right pieces and where they fit, and I am constantly curious to see what the whole picture is going to look like when my life is done, but I am in no rush.

Like Leonna Hale, I have plans for my future and while I may not share them with the world right now, I do want to live long enough to see them become a reality. I’m not interested anymore in anything or anyone that doesn’t want to be a part of a better world for our future or current children. I don’t have time to wait around for people to do the right thing. So once more, into the whatever.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall