When I reached out to my friend and sista writer Nada Chehade, this is the question she asked me. “What the fuck else are you going to do but survive this?” she sent over WhatsApp, and I thought to myself…” What the fuck AM I going to do but survive this?”
I was living in an office – yes an office – barely showering, this time because of lack of facilities, and trying to figure out where we were going to stay because we were quickly running out of options.
That day we found out that we got this apartment.
That same day.
It was, and continues to be a miracle. We’ve made changes so that what happened before doesn’t happen again. My agoraphobia seems to have disappeared, I think that’s because I spent so long living in hotels and in an office, I didn’t have time to think about how afraid I was of the things that could be outside the front door.
The thing is, I don’t fully feel at home here. Most of what I own goes on the wall, and because the building is brand new, we don’t want to mess the walls up and fill them with holes to hang things, so I can’t hang the items that mean the most to me.
Part of it though is I don’t want to go through all the stuff I packed up in a hurry. I don’t want to think about where each item came from and why it’s important. Not dealing with my past is a trauma response, but it’s not a healthy one.
Struggling to find my place in this new world – in this new opportunity – is the same as struggling to find my voice. When I started writing “In Case of My Death…Burn The World Down,” I was avoiding dealing with some serious issues that were affecting my mental health and my living situations.
Now I’m in a much healthier place and I am rethinking what I am writing about and why I am writing it. I have so much anger in me and so much of that anger is targeted at men, in general, for the harm they’ve caused me, my sistas, and my sisters.
So today I am writing to say I haven’t given up, but I have this uncomfortable feeling that comes with having time and space to heal.
I’ve never had that before. I’ve never been in the headspace of knowing I need to heal and have time to heal at the same time. Lots of folks live in a constant state of trauma response because they don’t have these valuable moments of healing. I understand what that’s like now.
I still believe that healing gets better, that it takes time – sometimes a lot more time than we have to devote to it – but that it can be done, not just because I’ve seen it, but because I’m living it.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
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Loud Mouth Brown Girl 
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