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Iknow plenty is written about the loneliness of men. This is not to add to that literature. This is just how I am dealing with mine. Typing to a page. It expects nothing from me. Just lets me talk.
So, what really is wrong with me? I have a beautiful family, a wonderful wife and an extraordinary son. I grew up not-poor. Which I consider privilege. In my nation, I grew up tall and fair. More privilege. Grew up in a regular home with its ups and down, but a consistently upward trajectory. Big large extended family who love me. A steady group of friends in life. A grandfather who gave me a strong scientific temper and a grandmother who always made me feel special, like a grandchild should. The only place I faced discrimination? Once at 11 when a school teacher believed a group of girls over me just because “girls don’t lie” and then some regional nonsense in college. Boilerplate.
So, what really is wrong with me? Nothing. I am just alone. When I am sad, I am alone. When I am melancholy, I am alone. When I despair, I am alone. When things do not go my way, I am alone. My worth comes from how I can be a positive impact. And my positive impact is not enough to afford me the luxury of expressing loneliness, of baring my emotions. That is not a privilege I do not have. And in a world with so much pain and sadness, I feel guilty of this loneliness in my lovely home, pot belly full of good food, and a PC more than some people’s annual salary.
But lonely I am. The only escape is work, when it occupies my mind completely. No holiday, no vacation, no material purchase, no beauty in the world can defeat the loneliness, for when my mind is at rest, it thinks of all the unresolved sadness. Simple, small, tiny bits of sadness, that today are an avalanche that I find more difficult to hold up on my back every day.
But why not talk to all those people in my life. Remember the positive impact I mentioned above? No one wants a whiny man. It’s not toxic masculinity. It is just male life. Chris Rock had once said, “Only women and children are loved unconditionally, men are loved based on what they are able to provide.” That is male life. No woman, no child, no family, no friend, no one really wants an adult male whose value is not more than the pain he brings. Not even a mother, no matter how loving.
I want to cry. Cry for days. I can’t. The last time I cried? At the end of the last episode of The Grand Tour. There it was permissible for me to cry. Even humorous. There were plenty of memes doing the rounds. Because that is what male tears are, humorous. Tolerable if you are worth enough, intolerable if not. So here I sit, drunk enough to feel my emotions, at 1:50 A.M., baring my heart to MS Word. Unable to cry. Struggling to shed a single tear, even in private. Unable to escape this cycle that will one day take me. But I have responsibilities, duties, expectations to meet, prove my worth.
So, tomorrow I will wake up, kiss my son, tell my wife how much I love her, check in on my parents, exchange inanities with my friends, think of what I have to do on Monday, and try, try to not let the loneliness through. It is my loneliness, mine alone. A man’s loneliness.
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