'Face Your Venom' T-Shirt

THE FACE YOUR VENOM DROP

For when you have to face parts of yourself you'd rather run from <3

This piece started with anger. In 2022, I was working a job that had slowly become a place where everything felt like it was my fault because my boss would regularly voice that. It didn't help that she didn't like a woman of color was already in management before she took over and decided to take everything out on me and would be sweet to me here and there. I eventually hit my limit and quit over text because that work place did not deserve the respect of two week notice. 

That anger became fuel because I promised myself if I'm going to work for a bitch again it might as well be me. 

That's where Face Your Venom came from.

What started as me needing somewhere to put my anger became something much bigger.

Because venom isn't always something outside of you.

Sometimes it's the darkest parts of your own mind. The thoughts you don't want to admit you're having. The days you don't want to remember. The parts of yourself you keep trying to hide, suppress, or outrun.

But you can't heal from something you're constantly running from.

Sometimes you have to turn around and face it.

THE DETAILS:

• 50/50 poly/cotton blend
• Double-needle stitched for durability
• Lightweight and comfortable
• Face Your Venom artwork
• Snake, shoe, eye-heart and checkerboard imagery

The artwork brings together different pieces of the story that became Face Your Venom. Snakes emerge from the shoe, eyes surround the heart, and a checkerboard pattern runs through the composition.

THE MEANING:

I used to think the only way to get through the darkest parts of myself was to fight them.

Fix them. Hide them. Pretend they weren't there.

But the parts of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge don't just disappear.

Your anger.
Your sadness.
Your resentment.
Your intrusive thoughts.
Your darkest days.

They're still a part of your story, even if you don't want them to be.

Facing your venom doesn't mean accepting the things that hurt you as permanent.

It means being honest enough to look at them.

To say, yeah, this is where I am right now.

And then decide what you're going to do with it.

For me, that meant taking all the anger I had toward something that made me feel small and turning it into something that reminded me how much I could create when I finally chose myself.

That's what DONTDIECLOTHING became.

The venom didn't disappear.

I just stopped letting it decide what happened next.

FACE YOUR VENOM.

DONTDIE.