Loud Mouth Brown Girl

There are so many people who look like they have better lives than the one I’m living. They have more money, maybe they are skinnier, or they look healthier, but the truth is, after going through what I went through, to get where I am today, I wouldn’t wish my life were any different.

I genuinely like who I am. I’m an incredibly talented writer, I’m courageous, powerful, smart, brilliant, and brave. I am all these things and more, and I don’t – finally – need in my life, other people to tell me who I am.

When I was growing up I wanted someone, anyone to explain to me what the fuck I was doing because I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t understand “survival mode” I just knew I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere because everywhere I went, I was being abused in some way or fashion.

At the laundry mat, it was the old man who would flash me his naked penis when mom did laundry, at Church it was the Priest who pretended to work for God, at school it was the teachers, the students, and the fucking Vice Principal outright abusing me sometimes in awful and sexual ways.

Growing up mixed-race was fucking horrible.

I was constantly stealing from my white counterparts because I thought if I had what they had, I’d be happy.

It took me 35 years, 2 boyfriends, 1 best friend, and a horrible experience with a girl trying to kiss a guy I liked for me to realize I no longer wanted to be someone others might consider jealous.

I remember being in an online relationship with a man whom I asked “is emotional masochism a thing?” He told me it absolutely was, and was definitely a kind of self-harm.

It was at this moment that so much of my life came into focus, and I started to understand that the reason I was spending so much time being jealous of others was because I felt I had so little control over my own life.

Now I am in a place where I have precisely as much control over my life as I can handle, and I am too overwhelmed with options for my future, to worry about being jealous of anyone else.

It’s very freeing having this much control over my life, but it didn’t come easy and it didn’t come without huge amounts of sacrifice.

My education suffered immensely because of what I experienced in order to get where I am so even though I am incredibly smart, I am certainly not as educated about the topics I want to be.

I have to work extra hard to educate myself to understand what a lot of people are talking about, and this can be incredibly frustrating and it makes it hard to sometimes keep up.

The energy that I used to spend on being jealous of other people, is now spent on creating items for the LMBG Shop, or for my next book projects. I spend it on doing something that makes me happy and then I find myself not worrying about what my sista’s around the world are doing unless they need my support.

It’s a privileged place that I’ve found myself in and I don’t want to take it for granted, that’s why I’m sitting here reminding myself that instead of getting jealous it’s my job to actually focus on making my own dreams come true.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall,