Loud Mouth Brown Girl

Between chronic pain, chronic mental health disabilities, and the physical disability of having a broken ankle, has shown me just how difficult disability is.

Across the spectrum, people who live with disabilities, struggle with mental health issues, largely because so many of us are alone.

So many people who live with disabilities, live in poverty and live alone without the help of friends, family, and allies, to support them.

I use comedy shows to get me through the worst of it, but I can’t lie. Some days all I do is sit around and think about how unfair it was that the littlest version of myself, went through so much pain, so other people could have better lives.

Each of us struggles differently when we have mental health issues, but we all have mental health issues, because we live with disability. The two are not the same, but they are correlated.

I don’t think enough doctors take that into consideration when they are talking about plans for healing.

Doctors love to work alone, but my doctors – largely because I refuse to give them a choice – are working together, so that we’re all on the same page. When I tell one doctor something, I tell the other doctors the same things, so that they know what’s up.

I try to keep my boundaries up when it comes to my mental health because so much of my past was about inviting in everyone who said they wanted to be there, only for me to get bitten by their wolfie ways later on.

I try to learn from other people who struggle with Mental Health issues, because sometimes what other people are doing is super helpful, but the problem with that, is that it’s difficult to find folks who have the kind of trauma based experience that I have.

It’s difficult to find people who deeply understand what’s going on inside my head, because first I have to explain everything I have been through, and then I have to hope that they don’t think what “I” have been through, isn’t too much for them to carry.

Too many people out there are announcing over night that they are “Mental Health Professionals,” with “Trauma experience,” but when it comes down to it, they have no idea what real trauma looks like.

Real trauma is being raped to death, only to have them bring you back from the death with chest compressions, so they can keep raping you for hours, only to tell you that you wanted it and it was your fault because you weren’t “loyal” enough.

Everyone in my life is so convinced that I am safe because what happened to me isn’t happening now, but I am not so sure.

Every single day I wake up I honestly wonder if that’s the day I am going to die, if that’s the day they’re going to come back, that fear wasn’t built overnight, and it’s not going to go away overnight.

I don’t want to punish my abusers anymore than the Justice system would punish them, but what I do want is for this stage of my life to be a little easier.

It’s not fair to me that so many of the men who raped me, not only got away with it, but then get to go off and have lives with wives, and children that will have no idea what they did to me.

I don’t think it’s fair that victims, and even “Survivors,” (whatever the fuck that means to be honest,), have to carry the trauma of what was done to us, when abusers get to go on and live their lives like nothing happened.

It’s not fucking fair. And what’s worse about it being not fair is that no one inside the justice system genuinely cares about how unfair it is because regardless of their reasons they don’t fully have any concept of what we go through, just so we can tell our stories.

Telling our stories isn’t easy, and so many people – especially cops and stakeholders in the #MentalHealth world have absolutely no idea what it’s like for us to share our stories.

We open ourselves up to so much more trauma when we have to go through our stories, and then we’re just left with it after we’re done speaking and not a single person in the world knows how to fix the open wounds.

We have to relearn every single time we’re triggered what works and what doesn’t because what worked last time isn’t or might not work the next time.

Too many times when I thought I had control I lost it completely and no one could help me because no one understood.

Part of me thinks that means I have a responsibility to get as better as I can, so I can help others explain just how fucking bad it is, but that being said, this is a challenge that I am not sure I am ready for…yet.

One day I will speak in front of the whole world and tell them how hard it is to just exist, in a world that wants Brown, Black, and Indigenous girls to do anything but exist.

Until then the only thing I can do is continue to take one step at a time, and to get comfortable being uncomfortable, in the now, which is scary as fuck.

When you’ve lived your entire life being abused, beaten, kicked, branded, and abused, being TOLD you are safe, is entirely different than actually feeling safe.

I’m trying to get comfortable feeling safe, but more and more I am reminded of my past, and the people in it, who got away with doing terrible horrible things, just because the world turns a blind eye to white male violence.

I’m tired y’all, but I am trying.

Sending all my love,