Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I have been out of the “Working” field for seven years. Seven years ago I quit/was fired at my job at Surrey Urban Mission Society, and I focused my energies on exploring the things that were important to me. I volunteered at a local radio station, and I sucked terribly at it, I traveled, and I sucked at that too, and then I started smoking cannabis and I found something I was truly passionate about.

I want to work in the Cannabis industry, but I don’t just want to promote any old brand. I want to make sure that folks know that cannabis has had a profound and inspiring effect on my mental health. I want to work with folks who want to try cannabis for the first time but don’t want to do it alone, and I want to help people navigate the cannabis industry so they find the best products for their needs. Eventually, I want to open up my own Cannabis Education Center, or CEC, so that I can help make these dreams become a reality.

Eventually.

In the meantime I am still studying, still learning, and preparing for what is to come next, so now we get to the heart of the problem.

I am genuinely happy. It’s deeper than being single and not “having those problems”, it’s genuinely about my source inside being happy. I’m not thrilled with how I got here, I hate that I hurt people, places, and things in my process, I hate that I have – ugh – red in my ledger, but I do. I am not perfect and I know I’ve left some harm in my wake.

Part of me thinks I don’t deserve happiness, because I was so sick for so long, and I couldn’t get up, get out of it, I couldn’t break the spell that kept me down so long I stopped living and only started existing online.

Seven years ago I was a fucking mess, but here I am now rounding into my favorite number of all time, and there are all these beautiful potential experiences I can be a part of and I am a little worried.

So I took a break from writing this post only to realize I am out of my anti-psychotic medications. I called the pharmacy immediately to see if they had enough to last me until I saw my doctor this week and of course, they were out. Do you know how fucking terrifying that is?

This medication has kept me sane for seven years, and here I am now out of meds, what am I going to do? These thoughts race through my brain as I sit on hold, only to hear that they did in fact find a place – not toooo far – where I can have my meds replaced.

I don’t know what life is like outside of being medicated, and I am not willing to risk my safety or the safety of others to find out, but when the medical world fails me, there is no other option. Without my meds, I am a different and much more broken-down version of myself who cannot sanely handle life.

I distinctly remember what I was like seven years ago. Breaking down in the office of a man I knew contributed to me being raped, directly. Breaking down on street corners and hospitalizing myself, all of it was just a fucking mess because I could no longer carry the weight of protecting pedophiles against all costs.

Especially once I woke up to the realization that “I” was their favorite victim, their “sacrifice” as they call me. I am no man’s sacrifice. I never have been and I never will be.

So I made sure to find a pharmacy that has my medication, in fact, I made sure my usual pharmacy made sure to find them because I am not going back to a world where I have no control.

I’ve spent most of my life in and out of hospitals because Doctors didn’t want to talk to me about the rape violence I was facing. No one wanted to acknowledge that I had been harmed in irrevocably unignorable ways, in heinous evil ways, that no human wants to talk about.

Silence is death for folks like me.

This is what it looks like when you are aware you need help and cannot live on your own, without support in your life. This is what it means when you live authentically and stop pretending that everything is okay all the time. As you can see it’s messy, but there is so much hope, happiness, and genuine joy here, that as much as it took it out of me to get here, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl