Loud Mouth Brown Girl

On the day I had my *major* panic attack in Winnipeg on the plane, I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t know what I was coming home to, but I knew I didn’t want to come home.

I had every right to be afraid. I wasn’t terrified of my abusers, they’d already done their worst to me, and I was afraid of dealing with it all.

I’d spent 15 years working with people who lived with addiction issues, I know and knew back then, how much trauma could destroy a person’s life. I’d been seeing it since I was 18.

I knew that addiction was in my future, but I made a choice. I could choose alcohol or weed – I knew I needed something stronger than what the doctors could give me and I wasn’t quite ready to get help. So I decided to start smoking cannabis.

And something majickal happened.

I started dancing, singing, and laughing again. I started drawing and painting and as it turns out I’m actually pretty decent at it.

I was happy again. And more than that I was dealing with what I’d been through. Decades worth of memories started coming back to me, reminding me of who I was before I started being abused, who I was in between, and who I could be after.

I started Loud Mouth Brown Girl because I wanted to figure out what I could do to help girls like me. Girls who had been raped and gone on ignored by cops, doctors, and lawyers, who could have protected and helped me, but instead chose to call me crazy.

I watched as everyone I asked for help swept my fears under the rug, and then I got abused again as I was stalked and harassed by one of my abusers. Although no one believes me, my experience tells me that I am not crazy.

Because of my experience, I am learning to harness my voice, by talking about mental health and all the good, bad, and ugly, that comes with it, so that I am not alone anymore.

Now that I am medicated, and am getting the help I need, now that I have a protective and loving support system around me, everything has changed.

It took what felt like forever to get here, and now that I am here, I am more focused than I’ve ever been before.

Some days I write, other days I clean, but everyday matters. Some days I rest, and I feel like shit for it, but I am learning to stop feeling guilty for finally getting to a place of healing.

Every step gets me closer to being the person I know I am capable of being for myself. For the little girl inside of me that never got the healing she deserved.

As I get older I am starting to realize I am less inclined to put up with bullshit. I’ve been through enough, I do not need to repeat old patterns to make myself feel better.

The darkness that I used to carry with me, the darkness that brought me so much comfort because it was so normal doesn’t live here anymore and that feels pretty damned good.

I used to hug my depression to me because it was all I had. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve found that depression doesn’t serve me and today I fight it with everything I have.

This isn’t to say that I always win, some days I still can’t get out of bed, but those days are fewer and further between than they ever have been before.

I highly suspect that’s due to the cannabis I’ve been using for the last six years.

Recently a friend texted me to ask if I wanted to try mushroom gummies. “Fuck yes!” was my instant reply. I took what she claimed was about a gram (I didn’t ask), and within about twenty minutes everything started to feel better.

I took a bath and fell asleep while the tub filled with water, the colors were just slightly brighter, and my brain felt relaxed in a way that cannabis has never been quite able to reach.

I am excited to do what my friend Hailey calls “a heroic dose,” which is 5-7 grams of mushrooms in one go. I think I am going to work my way up to that by starting my next dose at 2 grams, but nonetheless, I am excited.

Mental health is fascinating, once you can stretch outside of yourself and really look at the human brain and the way that it deals with things like trauma.

Trauma I’m told rewires your brain. There is a school of thinking that says your brain stops “maturing” at the same age you were first introduced to sex – if it’s a traumatic experience that child version of ourselves can stay longer until we heal the trauma that we’re dealing with, and often long after.

I feel more clear-minded today than I have in weeks. I think it’s because I stopped taking my sleeping pill every single night for the last several weeks. Without the sleeping pill, I feel more like myself, even though I’m still completely medicated by other medications. (Cannabis and my prescription med.)

I know I still need to take my other pill to remain clear-minded but what’s the price of a small pill a day so that I can feel more like myself?

Checking in with my friends about what’s going on in my life is new to me again, because I spent so long isolating myself, but I am letting myself trust in big ways with new people and it feels good. It feels healthy.

I’m getting better, and I’m proof it can be done.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl