Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I wasn’t always the girl who couldn’t focus. I had a hard time in school, but that was because I was being bulled at school, and either neglected, and abused at home, or both.

I struggled a lot as a child, mostly because someone threw me into a river of shit, and many of the people in my life, chose to stomp on my head so I couldn’t escape.

I’m free now, but today I hI ave struggles that I wouldn’t have had, if my community had rallied towards me, instead of against me.

I struggle with focus, which is why I mainly post once a week. I struggle with my eating habits, some days I eat all day long, and other days I don’t eat at all. I still struggle with anemia, and bulimia, because I spent most of my life being told I was fat. By everyone from my classmates, to my own mother.

I was about nine the first time I realized I was never going to be “Enough,” and I think that’s about the same time I started giving up on myself. Even if I am good at something, I rarely pursue it in the long run, because attention scares the real life shit out of me.

Which is ironic when you consider I built this website, specifically so I could put attention on myself. But there’s a difference between sharing your stories online, and then meeting the people who those stories affect, in the physical world.

I remember meeting D & D at Pride one year, I’d already met them a few times by this point, but this particular year, they knew I was unhoused and wanted to know if I was okay.

I assured them I was fine, but inside I was livid, at myself. Mainly because I had shared something with the world that I wasn’t ready for the world to acknowledge, and I didn’t know that, until I saw the pity in their eyes.

I feel no shame now. Because I knew it was going to happen eventually, I’d seen it happen to more than one housing worker, more than one social worker, a few Emmy award winners and even a soldier or two. So why not me?

At the end of the day each and every one of us is one paycheck, mental health breakdown, or accident, from being unhoused and living on the streets. Sure you can couch surf for awhile, maybe afford a hotel here and there, but by the end of it, you’re left wondering if crack is your future.

I fully believe that the universe wants the best for us, but I understand now more than ever that addiction is a choice. It’s a disease yes, but it’s also a choice and framing it as a disease alone, takes away the autonomy that we have over ourselves.

I think it’s dangerous to think “People just choose drugs over life.” No, they choose a solution, something to make the pain stop, but at the end of the day, they choose.

Is it a pretty choice? Nah, it’s butt fuckin ugly complete with hair moles and whatever else you can imagine an ugly butt being, but at the end of the day, yes, addiction is a choice.

And so is sobriety. It’s a choice that we make every minute of every single day. Some days are harder than others, and yeah some days I crave alcohol like fish crave the sea, but other days the day passes without it ever being a first thought.

I can drink now. In that I mean I can go to a restaurant, or a cafe with a friend or my mom and have (a) drink. Just one, without needing a second, without rushing myself through the first so I can obliterate my brain and lock out all the sorrow that has been haunting me.

In my old days, with my old friends, drinking just one drink seemed impossible. Because all I really wanted was to distract my mind from all the shit I was starting to remember. Alcohol numbed (for me) the memory center of my brain, and hid all the shit that I am now dealing with, because back then I was nowhere near ready.

Today I am a much stronger version of myself. I get up, I go to the gym, I work out, and I leave. I make my content, I don’t stress about what I don’t know, I learn as I go, and I actually enjoy the process of losing myself in the twenty minutes I’m on the treadmill or the fifteen minutes I’m doing leg presses.

I don’t feel judged, or misunderstood by the people in my life, and by “misunderstood” I mean people in my life today don’t complicate what I am trying to say by reading into what they think I’m trying to say.

No, life’s not fucking perfect, my living situation is shit. Some of my neighbors are flat out insane, and others are sweet as pie.

Like all communities, mine has it’s good days and it’s bad days.

Each of the women in my life are struggling or learning how to navigate their struggles in one way or another, and each of us are leaning on each other when we need to, and giving each other space when we need that too.

I don’t feel guilty for not checking in on my friends every single day, and when I remember to, they do as well. And vice versa.

The balance that I have found, in this place I never thought I’d see is astounding, so much so that I am terrified of rocking the boat.

That being said, I am having an absolute blast experiencing all these new adventures. I take myself out on long ass walks all the time, which is one of my favorite things to do. I go out to eat tacos by myself, I go shopping by myself. I enjoy my own fucking company in ways I never did when I was younger.

And I think the reason for that is because if you look at pictures of past me vs current me, there’s a sadness in my eyes, like deep down I know what’s going on and I’m just trying to smile past it all. Today the people in my life know what happened to me. Some of the folks in my life even know my abusers from their own experiences with these people.

I’m loved. I’m loving who I am becoming, and I am proud of myself for taking on challenges that old me would have been too embarrassed to even consider, but by the same token I am also HELLA resentful of the fact that this is how my life turned out.

People who had the power to put my abusers in prison, chose not to, and now I know from the rumor mill, that they are all still out there abusing and using women like dirt, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Mainly because when I say “Women” what I really mean are “Girls who don’t know better.” I remember the last time I talked to one of my abusers, there was a girl working the corner across the street, she couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but there was nothing I could do.

At that age in British Columbia, girls are given autonomy, even if she had a pimp, (she probably did,) unless she was willing to testify against him, there’s nothing the cops can do.

I was never that girl, they kept me in my house when they abused me, or in their homes, I was never put onto the street, and I don’t think I would have survived this far if I had been.

I do know that what irks me most, is there’s very little “I” can do, to change policy because anyone who might listen to me, thinks I’m psychotic, because my doctors refuse to admit the even remote possibility that I am telling the truth.

And that my friends is why so many people end up on the street. When people of authority call you a liar, tell you and the world that you’re psychotic, and that you’ve made it all up, it gives the abusers the ability to say “See? we told you, now a person of authority has said the same thing.”

The problem is that I know I am not K.R’s only victim or survivor. I know there are many of us around the globe, and I know that one day we will come together and I won’t be alone anymore.

Until then I’ll continue reminding you, that I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to harness so much rage, pain, sorrow, anxiety, depression, and anger. I am like this because I was molded by abusers, who thought it was perfectly okay to do what they did to a child, only because I was and am a Black child.

Men who did what they did to Indigenous boys, girls, and non-binary or trans people, are the reason so many of us are splintered in our consciousness, why so many of us are hurting today. If you out there reading this think it’s more important to protect those who prey on children, please do us all a favor and turn yourselves into the cops.

I see nothing wrong with doing what I had to do to survive, but it makes me laugh that the same men who abused me, are out there willingly protecting pedophiles, and then turning around and calling themselves gangsters.

I’m sorry but Bugsy Sigel would never.

I remember growing up watching the old mob movies and I remember the rules very well. You don’t hurt kids, and you don’t hurt women. Today’s “Gangsters” don’t care about those rules, and that not only makes them dangerous, it makes them willing to do anything to make a buck.

So no, again, I wouldn’t be this way if they had followed the rules…nor would I be free if I had kept my mouth shut.

But as the old saying goes:

If you wanted me to be kinder about your name, you shouldn’t have been such a douchebag.

I no longer feel the need to protect people who wanted me to die, like Danielle in grade ten, so that she could have a longer life. (Yes, she really believed my death would give her a longer life.) Like please fuck all the way off, if you’re willing to set ANYONE on fire, who doesn’t deserve it just so you can be warm.

The absolute willingness to be cruel, cold, and calculating to folks who would give you everything, needs to be studied.

In the meantime I’m going to go enjoy that beautiful life you don’t think I deserve because you hate the color of my skin.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl