Crying
Do you cry?
Can you?
Will you?
Might you try?
In order to be a good man, I cauterised my emotions. I could take lots of pain, and smile. Being a Good Man was the only option, modelled by movies and men around me. Being gay was a slur. It is hard for me to explain the depths and potency of how this was imprinted on me. I identified as an officer, a soldier, a martial artist and other such popular extreme manly idealised tropes. My mother never hugged me, and that’s hard to say, without self depreciating ridicule, that comes from within and from culture. Nurturement matters if we are not to have a sociopathic society. And oh boy, was I sociopathic.
In my early twenties after a headlong rush into whatever I could find to distract, and entertain myself, I came to begin to realise that I couldn't cry. And that maybe this was a Bad Thing. It took a few years of work, but eventually I was able to let water leak from my eyes. After that I named not being able to cry to being like not being able to orgasm. And yet, 30 years later, I am still working with learning to cry. The imprints of The Good Man still authoritatively manipulating me like a ghostly puppeteer.
Might it be possible for me to cry each day, as a practise? I would like to, just like I would like to be able to have sex with people with male genitalia, but there is a deep and reactive part of me that holds a firm barrier that has stopped me from enjoying more choice in my life.
I have compassion for it, and gratitude. Being a Good Man was the only way to get some kind of belonging, for surviving. And, oh boy, did it allow me to do some incredible things, some insanely foolish things too, as I situated myself as both incredibly 'hard' and also completely disposable. I was so resilient. So strong. I could push my body past all the messages that I was damaging myself. I had lightening reflexes and I was sociopathic, and without guilt.
And depressed. And with ADHD.
I so mourn. I mourn the lost years, the life, that could and should have been.
I need to cry. I want to cry alone, with myself, each day. But until yesterday, I have been unaware that I deeply feared doing crying alone. It was as if some ethereal and omnipresent Good Man will judge me as lacking, as weak, as gay, or issue that painful refrain, 'You are too sensitive'.
And, welcome tears, thank you.
Thank you for the work that led to here, Thank you to the part that protected me so well, and thank you for the work that makes joy more possible.