Learn To Fucking Love Yourself…
Because God Damnit, You’re Toxicity Is Murder For The Rest of Us
I know that I’ve used this photo before, but I’ve never talked about it before, and I think now is the day I should do that.
Since I took that photo I’ve lost about an additional thirty pounds, and that’s only because I was in a manual wheelchair for three months that I had to use my entire body to use, for almost two and a half months. That helped me lose weight.
Walking and going to the gym before the broken ankle, also helped me lose weight. But here’s the thing: My goal is not just to lose weight. It’s to feel like myself, in my own skin, for the first time in my life.
My entire life, everything about my body from my breasts to my ass, and even my nail beds were under scrutiny by white women and men, who thought fetishizing or admiring, or even calling out the flaws in my body, were somehow also complimentary.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As a child, I either felt too beautiful, or not beautiful enough, and while that “Too beautiful” thing might sound like a pathetic burden to worry about carrying, what I mean by that, is that men literally wouldn’t keep their hands off my tiny body.
So I gained weight thinking that would protect me. Turns out that what protected me was the fact that I am now too old for my old abusers. They prefer innocent little things, they can drug, and control through violence and fear.
The problem is that none of that shit works on me anymore. I’m too wise to their ways and now I not only know how to protect myself, I love myself enough to let the people who are genuinely wanting to, carry some of the trauma that I am holding on to.
I love myself today because I have people in my life, who have helped me see that I am not the person my abusers wanted — and yes needed — me to be.
I am something much different, stronger, more powerful, wiser, and definitely more interested in building a life for myself, than I ever have been before.
Yeah, it took what felt like fucking forever, for me to get here, for me to post a photo such as this:
With my saggy breasts, and my larger more than small behind, I should feel — according to society’s standards — ashamed because I am not the “European” version of Beautiful.
But here’s a secret I’ve never told anyone…I hate being called beautiful. Fucking hate it. Nearly but not all, of my former abusers, used that word to describe my body as they did indescribable things to that same body while telling me how loved and cherished I was.
They twisted the word into something disgusting and ugly and so I have no interest in being seen as beautiful by European standards.
I want to be seen as beautiful for myself, by myself, without a man to tell the world that I am worthy of being loved.
If you can’t love me as a single Black, Biracial person, then you don’t deserve to be around when I finally do find someone to put up with my bullshit. You don’t — because you won’t choose to earn — that part of my journey.
In 2021 I posted this photo:
The caption reads: “ This is my stomach. My stomach is about to eat McDonald’s at twelve forty-two am. My stomach is fat. My stomach is NOT ashamed. After everything I’ve survived, I’ve decided not to care about my weight today. Not tomorrow either. Fucking deal with it.
I am that bitch. I am that Fucking Bitch who said that, and I stand by it. I fully embrace every curve, scar, and stretch mark, because it may not be beautiful to you, but I now understand all the horrid things that my body and I had to survive to get where we are today.
Several years ago a former person in my world asked me not to show myself nude on the internet. HE — a white cis man — then proceeded to post a naked photo of himself on Instagram.
What’s good for the goose is only good for the gander when the gander decides, and that’s just not the world I want to fucking live in.
I want to live in a world that believes all bodies are beautiful, regardless of shape, size, ability or disability, colour or race, shade or creed, nationality or orientation. And for that to happen all you self-deprecating cunts need to start learning to love yourself.
Start with 1 thing. Find one fucking thing that you love about yourself. Maybe it’s because your eyes are like no one else’s, or maybe because like me, your nose is an inherited trait that all your family members have, so it’s something you have in common. I used to HATE my nose, until I found my siblings about ten years ago, and realized they look just like me.
It was the first time in my life, after thirty-odd years of feeling alone, that I saw people who looked like me and I finally started to feel less alone.
My younger brother and I have the same eyes, but my older brother and I have the same nose. That’s what connects me to my brothers, and it makes me giggle every time I think about it.
I want you to love yourself because loving yourself is powerful. When you love yourself, no one can hurt you. No matter what toxic shit they throw at you, it will refuse to stick, specifically because you know yourself inside and out.
In my next essay I’ll tell you some tricks to find ways to love yourself, or you can just follow my main blog at Loud Mouth Brown Girl.
In the meantime, start with mirror work. Start looking at your face, your body, in the mirror. Let yourself remember all the shit, all the fights, all the battles, and then find ways to thank yourself for surviving because YOU survived, “I” believe I can too.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
