Loud Mouth Brown Girl

******TRIGGER WARNING****** Before you read any further please note that this essay contains real stories of real abuse that may cause harm to your psyche. Please read with caution.

But here I am, the only person in the friend group that is still going, because life happens, and the universe decided “Devon, it’s time.”

I also contributed to that decision because I recognized what this one femme presenting Tik Tok’er said recently: Working out at the gym is political.

She went on to say that men, abusive toxic men, want us weak and incapable of fighting back for ourselves. I’ll take that, and look back to see that’s precisely how the men in my life wanted me.

When I said no they would laugh and say “we’ll see” and that always reminded me that my saying “No” for them, was always conditional on their mood, not my decisions.

Recently I helped a woman escape a toxic situation, and in doing so I realized like “Holy fuck, there really are people out there who will follow the movers to find you,” that was the moment I realized that for me going to the gym isn’t just political.

It’s weaponry. It’s literally me, saying to the universe “If you want me, I Am Going To Be Fighting Back.” I fought last time, but it wasn’t hard enough to scare my abusers from doing what they did.

It’s my hopes that as I build my community, as I make more gym friends, as I make more connections in the writing world, I will insulate myself from them so I don’t have to fight. But that being said, every community has it’s abusers, no matter how safe you think you are.

I understand being disabled and not feeling like you have the energy, I also understand pushing through that darkness and doing it anyway. There are two sides of the same coin.

Some people literally can not get up, and get off their ass, to make it to the gym, no matter how much they may secretly want to. Other people aren’t comfortable working out for a variety of reasons that usually relate to serious and severe body trauma.

And other people are just starting because they’ve finally gotten the capacity they need to do exactly that, work out all the shit that’s been holding them back.

Here’s the thing lots of healthy people don’t understand: If you’re chronically ill, because you have a Chronic Illness, that hasn’t been diagnosed, there’s nothing a healthy person can say to a sick person, that the sick person hasn’t said themselves.

If I had the energy and capacity to go to the gym nine years ago I would have, but I had severe anemia that was holding me back, and doctors that weren’t helping me.

I finally have a doctor that believes me when I say something is wrong, and is helping me navigate all the issues that come both from trauma, but also from getting older.

It’s becoming abundantly clear that I am not going to be giving birth, but that also means that as I age, I have to think about things like peri-menopause, something I didn’t think I’d ever have to worry about.

Working out is helping me deal with the symptoms that come with periM, and it’s actually making me feel better. On days when I don’t work out I feel cranky, overly emotional, and my emotions are all over the place. I’m up, down, inside out and inbetween all at once, and it’s really unfun.

Part of this desire to work out comes from having a broken ankle. For more than nine months I sat back watching my friends have the best time, while I curled in a corner waiting to heal.

That was a very uncomfortable feeling because I started blocking the door again, if only because I knew that if I couldn’t run, then I’d at least need to make sure they couldn’t get in.

Does it sound paranoid? Of course, but that’s what happens when all the men you know simultaneously choose you as their “Sacrifice” so they can make excuses about why they did what they did.

I heard recently one of my abusers took a hell of a beating in prison, that doesn’t make me happy. So few people understand how deeply entrenched the abuse was and how long it took for me to break the cycle.

Excuses can be made, but choices were made? So at this point hearing my abusers are getting street justice just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t mean anything until the doctors, the lawyers, cops, and judges acknowledge that there is a serious problem with child sex trafficking in this country.

The Canadian Femicide Observatory has been tracking cases of domestic violence and abuse for the last ten years if not longer.

This is a list of women across Canada who fought back and didn’t make it, who didn’t fight back, who couldn’t fight back, women who didn’t get the chance, women who would have if they could have, women who were taken before their life deserved to be over.

Every time we vote.

Every time we take up space.

Every time we say “We have a right to be here.”

Every time we demand our fair share.

Every time we slink into a corner.

Every time we cry.

Every time we laugh.

Every time we’re happy.

They kill us. And so you bet your ass, I am preparing for war, whether it’s here, there or anywhere, I am making sure that my body is trained to fight back tooth and nail to save my life, and the lives of those I care about. Because if I don’t, who will?

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl