Loud Mouth Brown Girl

Did you know that until ten years ago, I had an incredibly more than decent singing voice? I used to sing all the time, in fact I started singing when I was in my twenties.

It was my way of finding my voice, until something bad happened, and I stopped singing. I never wanted to sing professionally, my voice was for me. For the little girl inside of me who did want to be a singer, who thought it might be cool to be famous, who realized being famous, meant everyone knew your secrets.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to study humanity, I wanted to understand how we got from “Jesus” to where we are today.

History, religion, legends, those were my passions, so it makes sense that I wanted to be a writer, but that wasn’t my first dream, it was just the first dream I made, become a reality.

I wanted to be a verified astronaut, I wanted to be a historian, and I wanted to see everything, and do it all. But as it turns out, when the opportunities that would have led me to being “Supergirl” showed up, it wasn’t the path I wanted to take.

I can’t explain why. I’ve had some beautiful opportunities for wealth and fame come my way in the last ten years, but every single time one of those doors opened, the ones that I really want to go through closed.

So here I am, and I’m happy that I am here, but I regret that the years I spent screaming, because I couldn’t speak, means that now my throat is too sore to sing.

I guess I should have taken better care of myself right? Not screamed so much? But the thing is, ten years ago (nine and a half), all I could do is scream.

I would scream at home of course, into a pillow, over and over and over again, when no one was home. I must have driven my neighbors insane. I am so sorry.

But I was going through something I didn’t have words for, and at the time, screaming it out, was the only way to get it out. I know folks heard me, but no one ever stopped in to say “Hey, are you okay?”

No one in my past life wanted me sober. They wanted me drunk, drugged, and controllable, every single one of them. As soon as I quit drinking for real, all my “friends” faded away.

As soon as I said “I need help,” suddenly, I was persona non grata. My church community shunned me, and every single person in my life walked away without a second glance, because it was far easier than saying “Hey let’s team up to stop the cycle of abuse this one person has been going through for almost thirty five years.”

It was exhausting coming down from ripping off my mask. It wasn’t like I just stopped masking, it was like the emotional layers of trauma I had become used to hiding, were fading away and they weren’t going quietly.

There was tears, screaming, fighting with everyone I loved, battling the very core of myself to shift and evolve so that I could make room to be the person writing this, was fucking hard.

I did interviews and people accused me of internal racism, and anti-Black bias, that I didn’t know that I had, because no one had ever stopped to say “Hey, the way you’ve been thought to think is very white supremacist.”

Not one person who interviewed me, stopped to understand that I didn’t “Choose” to be raised in one cult group after another, not one person stopped to ask if I was okay, they all just wanted the trauma story.

And then many of them wanted to shame me, for not leaving the church sooner, or for not escaping fast enough, or for not being more famous and successful.

Sorry folks, most people who escape cults, don’t get TLC lifetime deals, they don’t get famous, and they don’t end up being shoved in your face over and over and over again, because if they did, you’d have to actually talk about how they got there.

Sure, sometimes like Leah Remini and Mike Rinder they get their fifteen minutes of fame and if you’re lucky they’ll even take you seriously, but at the end of the day the reason most of us don’t sing anymore, isn’t because we don’t want to.

It’s because after years of being stuck in survival mode, after decades of being abused, traumatized, and screaming for help that never came, everyone who hears the voice you have left, doesn’t stop to think “Damn look at how good she is after that,” they think to themselves, “She could be so much better.”

Yeah, I could be. But I didn’t get the luxury of protecting my voice so I could choose when and where to share it, my voice was stolen from me by men who knew better, Priests who didn’t care that God was watching, and gym teachers who figured you’d like it because “we both have vaginas.”

Some of y’all who work with kids, are fucking disgusting. You’re sick, and you need help. Being attracted to the most vulnerable citizens in your community is not a cute look. It’s not adorable, it’s a true aberration that both needs to be studied and eradicated.

I wanted to delete parts of this post, but the thing is, that everything I’ve said is true. When we see people signing, dancing, or sharing their talents, rarely do we stop and gasp and realize “That person went through Hell, so they could be the one we’re seeing right now.” We don’t because we’re not trained to be empathic anymore.

I was trained and conditioned to believe that asking for help was a toxic trait, not that it would help me break generational curses. It was only later when mom started working on the front lines of poverty that she learned that asking for help was okay.

I however, had to wait another twenty years to learn that lesson, and in that length of time I was very nearly murdered, more than once.

So I deeply apologize, that I am not a starlit, that I haven’t written a movie, or changed the world in some way, but as far as I am concerned, the fact that I survived, did change the world.

It’s not your job to believe that, it’s my job to prove it.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl