Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I didn’t know why I started at the gym, until I broke my ankle.

I don’t smoke in my house, I smoke outside, so going out for a smoke was quite the exercise, but the more that I used that wheelchair S got me, the more that I realized I was -truly- on my own if I fell with a broken ankle, the more desperate I felt.

I’ve been vulnerable before, but the difference was I had all use of my limbs. This time I was down one, which meant I couldn’t run, I could fight back, but I knew I wouldn’t win, and honestly, that pissed me off.

It wasn’t my fault that I broke my ankle, it was my problem however, that the decorations put up by other folks, were put too high for me to get, and so I thought I was solving it.

But right before I climbed on that chair, my only thought was “I need a break.” My first thought after I fell off that chair was “I don’t want to die.”

I didn’t die, but I did realize I want to fight for my life. I couldn’t fight back before because there was too many of them, and because they drugged me and kept me drugged for too long for me to be conscious enough to fight back. I did what I could, but the only thing that stopped it, was me telling my story.

I remember working at Romantic Boutique, and The Fantasy Factory; I met so many amazing people and to them sex was a consensual choice, not a forced against your will act.

I think my experiences in the adult shop world taught me that I am more than what others see. I was a very beautiful person who tried to ugly themselves up so that I would be left the Hell alone. That didn’t work either, and now I have all these missing teeth and honestly? I’ve never felt more authentically myself.

Going to the gym hasn’t given me any more confidence than I had when I started, but what it has done, has given me the power to give zero fucks.

At the gym I go to, there are all kinds of people, at all different stages of their journey, and so while I do watch folks to learn how to use different machines that need to smirk, smile, or judge others is non-existent, especially as I recognize that I am just starting myself.

It’s so much easier to be grateful, when the universe gets out of your way. Some folks say you have to learn to roll with the punches, which would be easier to do if humans weren’t on a massive tidal wave about to strike at any moment.

I understand the concept of physically and emotionally being incapable, and or not ready. I’ve been there, so while I won’t challenge you all to join me, I will say I am ready when you are, to get started.

When you’re physically incapable of keeping up with your friends, when you’re left behind, when you’re tired of being isolated because your body doesn’t move the way it could with a little pressure, it gets easier to feel the motivation to push yourself.

The thing is, some people can’t. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s not that they aren’t willing to try, it’s the fact that between their brain and their body, perhaps even their spirit, they are physically in fucking capable, of doing what you think they should be doing.

I was that person for decades. Not just because I was being drugged against my will, but also because when I wasn’t being drugged, I was in a state of perpetual non-ending shock.

I could see what was happening around me, but the abuse was so perpetual, and so ongoing, as well as so darkly toxic, I didn’t know how to see straight. Up, down, inside out, the world didn’t make sense to me.

All I wanted was to have someone say to me “This is who you are, be this person,” and have it feel okay, but no matter who people told me to be, I really couldn’t fit into the boxes they built.

Finding out that you’re different than who you’re supposed to be, gives the system the kind of shock that doesn’t go away over night.

I was made into the Loud Mouth Brown Girl, and I accepted the title out of rage, resentment, and anger, but by the same token I feel like if I don’t push myself to be more than just an author, then I am going to remain stagnant for my entire life.

Being an author was my whole dream for so long, so making room for other parts of that dream to manifest is absolutely scary.

My doctors ask me regularly if I am still afraid for my life, I tell them no but the true answer is yes, because honestly I know what’s out there now. I know how many men are willing to kill to keep their abusive secrets, but worse, I know how many of you women are willingly going to bed with abusers, thinking their abuse doesn’t darken your soul.

That’s the part that bothers me the most.

If you watch a man gang rape a woman and then you go to bed with him? Baby you sleeping with a rapist, and you know you’re out there. That’s even worse, because you genuinely think you’re safe.

That’s a kind of sickness that needs to be studied, but that’s also not my fight. My fight is with the men and women of the government who don’t believe, and who choose to pretend that what happened to me, isn’t still happening today.

My grandfather used to joke that Scott Road in North Delta and Surrey BC “Separated the ladies from the whores,” he thought it was funny. But the truth is that Scott road is a defining road;

In Surrey men live freely. North Delta is where they go when they want to get away with abusing children. It’s a one road separator, but the name of the city makes all the difference.

I’ve never been raped in Surrey, but that’s only because the men had clever ways of taking me across the border. Why? Because North Delta doesn’t and won’t invest in the resources to investigate crimes done by men who live “out of town.”

I tell you all of this so you understand to a small degree, the horror’s a younger, smaller, more vulnerable version of myself went through just so you can tell me “Going to the gym is a privilege.”

Yeah it is, it’s also a fucking necessity so that what happened before, doesn’t happen again.

Don’t tell me people in wheelchairs don’t carry knives and or flashlights to protect themselves.

Look, what works for me isn’t going to work for you. Sometimes I do talk to myself, other times I talk to the universe, is that any weirder than talking to God?

The thing is, God as most people know it, doesn’t and has never made sense to me. This whole idea that “There can be only one” is stupid. No one makes anything of themselves alone.

Every person on this planet has someone who believes in them, the question is do you believe in yourself? Enough to break stereotypes? Even enough to fight back against the bullying?

Loving yourself enough to keep yourself whole even as everyone who claims to love you rips you apart is the hardest shit we will ever do.

I swear to the Gods, if not for Nada Chehade, I wouldn’t be here today to write this essay. She saved my life, long enough for the universe to find a door for me to walk through that was safe.

That’s what my Goddess has done for me, going to the gym is all apart of healing the parts of me that were torn apart by people who didn’t like what they saw, thinking that would end my life.

Jokes on them, I’m still here and I’m stronger than I’ve ever been before.

And you know what? It feels exactly as shockingly weird as you think it might be. Turns out I AM the one, who knew?

Sending all my Love,

Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl