What The Fuck Is A Love Language?
Our Love Language Tells Us Who We Are
I used to think that my love language was gifts. Until recently I was the kind of person who only saw receiving as the kind of love I needed. And that’s yes, precisely because I was thirsting for love in many different ways.
Mostly because no one ever stopped to think “I bet Devon would really love this…” enough to actually give me a gift, until two years ago when I met my current group of friends.
One of the things that I’ve learned about friendship is that it doesn’t always last forever. Sometimes if you’re truly lucky, and you work hard at keeping the boundaries of the relationship working and well oiled, they can last a life time.
But the truth is, that life long friendships and relationships these days are rare. With the way that we as a society prioritize comfort over discomfort, we don’t necessarily take accountability ourselves, when a relationship falls apart.
It’s up to us as individuals to know what the boundary lines are, but we also have to know what we’re not only willing but capable of giving. I didn’t realize this as a child because as a child I didn’t care to think about things like work. I just focused on treating folks how I wanted to be treated, not that it worked very often.
A lot of the time I was treated very badly, and so I, in turn, treated people very badly. I made mistakes not because I didn’t know better, but because I just wanted to fit in.
Accepting that I am different from other people, and that’s a beautiful thing. My trauma is unlike any of the traumas my friends have been through, it’s not deeper, it’s not worse, it’s not more important or valid, it’s just different.
That doesn’t make their trauma any less important because some of the shit my girlfriends have been through is absolutely wild.
And yet individually we all survived to find that we’ve met up in a place none of us expected to be, and yet all of us need to be.
And for various reasons we made the deliberate choice, to remain friends, to become friends, to treat each other the way that we want to be treated, without expecting others to do what they are not capable of achieving.
“When folks tell you who they are, believe them.”
I know this lesson so fucking well, and yet sometimes I still find that I don’t always notice, pay attention to, acknowledge, or act on the red flags that I see, purely because I am conditioned not to deal with them.
My whole life I’ve survived by ignoring what was done, and what was happening to me, and now today I have an entirely different love language than when I was a child, specifically because I’ve discovered that giving to folks I care about, is far more important than giving.
The very fact that I know I can call any one of my friends at two am just to talk if I need to, (Not that I would friends…), or that I can call one up and say “Let’s go adventuring…” and that’s precisely what we end up doing, has changed the game for me.
I love getting gifts, that still feels very good to me, but I also love giving, and spending time with people I care about, even if it’s to go for a fucking coffee.
Every single day with my friends is different and I never have to worry about who is saying what behind my back because if anyone does, the others tell me. We have an open style of communication which allows us to not have to pretend, it allows us to take off our masks.
My friends catch me “talking,” to the voices in my head all the time and they don’t think anything of it. “That’s just Devon talking to themselves again…” is a normal occurrence, and no one judges me because I choose to use my voice to figure out how I’m feeling about something instead of my head.
The people who love me don’t think I’m weird, or extra, they don’t think any one of us is too much or unworthy of being loved. Because we’re all so different, we fit together like a well-oiled machine and it wasn’t on purpose.
It took time, it took a lot of waves, and it took not fully understanding when each other needed a break sometimes, it was a learning process.
Most of my friends are white women, which might make you wonder how the fuck I can go so hard on white women when it comes to racism when I spend so much time around them.
The truth is that as much as I love my white friends, there are things they can’t understand. Like being seen as visibly different, being unheard, or ignored purely and only for the reason that I am a coloured person.
It’s not easy to be surrounded by white people all the fucking time, but at the same time, this specific group of white people, have taken the time to understand, carry, and accept me in spite of my trauma, not just because I am something that needs to be taken care of me.
I am — it is incredibly true — a shell of the person I used to be. The person I used to be wasn’t full either, she was half-full, broken and abused, tortured, and traumatized by grown-ass men who should have known better.
The person I am today is in a constant state of preparing for war, specifically because I never know when or if, my abusers are going to come back.
Today, my love language is more about knowing I have an army of people willing to put their names on the line to protect my better interests and my safety.
It’s healing to know that I am protected, and worthy of being protected because the “Knowing” in of itself is powerful.
Knowing you deserve to be loved, in the ways that heal the parts of you that need healing, and fill the parts of you that need filling, without it always being about sex or the almighty orgasm, is a huge fucking deal.
So, if you can, think about what makes you happy, and what brings you joy, and find a way to execute more of that in your life, so you can have the happiness you deserve.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
