The Men We Weep For.

When I was 9, I peeked around a wall and watched my Mamaw silently cry as she sat on the steps in her home. I stood, frozen, as I observed a mother’s quiet defeat from the addictions her son was wrestling with. Overwhelmed by her fears for him and her fears for me, she took a moment and she wept. 

When I was 16, I came home from school in a hurry to go somewhere I thought was really important. My mom followed me around the house trying to get me to stop, to listen. When I turned around, exasperated, she sat me down and told me my dad had died. He had committed suicide. In my room alone after the funeral, I wept. 

When I was 27, my brother, the son of my stepdad, died. Two days after his mother, both from a drug overdose. At the end of his funeral, my mom laid her head in my lap and wept. She wept for him and she wept for my stepfather, who couldn’t bring himself to face the day. 

When I was 28, I stood by my stepfather’s side as he took his last breath. Surrounded by his mother, my mother, my sisters and my aunts, his addiction defeated him once and for all. Collectively, we wept.

When I was 29, I experienced first hand how unresolved childhood and war trauma could manifest as violence, addiction and infidelity. Over and over again, I wept.

When I was 31, I almost lost my parter to suicide. After, I watched as he tried to advocate for himself only to be denied, cast off and failed over and over again by the system that was supposed to help him. I watched as he became a shell of himself. Still, I weep.

This could be seen as a collection of stories about the men who are selfish and undeserving of the women who love them so deeply. The women who begged and bargained with the universe, that did everything they could to save the men who didn’t or couldn’t save themselves. The women who left and came back, the ones you think should have had the backbone to walk away for good.

But it’s not. These women are strong, admirable women. They love deeply and unconditionally. I know because I am one.

This is about the men in my life I have watched dissolve into disease. The men whose light I’ve watched slowly fade from their eyes. The ones I’ve seen do horrible things that no one should be capable of. The men who drank themselves to death and the one’s who couldn’t find a reason to keep going.

This is about the moment I looked into my partners eyes and realized that I no longer recognized the man I loved.

All of the men in these stories were deeply affected by their childhood trauma, their mental health struggles and their addictions. They were ultimately defined by them. All of these men deserved better.

This is about our our fathers, our sons, partners and friends.

This is about how we talk about men.

When I scroll social media, I can see millions of posts, without even trying, about how beautiful and amazing I am for being a woman. I see post after post telling me how much I’m worth, how well I should be treated.

I also see millions of posts saying that degrading men as whole should be an acceptable part of my healing process. That I am better than men, I am worth more than men. I’ve even seen violence towards men portrayed a joke, going as far as saying they deserve it.

Can you imagine if you saw a post saying that degrading women is an acceptable part of a man’s healing process, that they were worth more than women? Joking that the women who hurt them deserve violence?

There are a lot of posts dedicated to the narratives of, “Men aren’t shit, men are worthless, men will never change.”

I haven’t seen many posts that focus on how much men deserve to know their worth, how they deserve to be treated, or how amazing they are. When I do, there are quite a few comments arguing that this isn’t true.

Positive posts about men are often geared towards finding the ‘one good one’ in the never ending sea of trash. A good man is seen as an exception to the rule.

Can you fucking imagine if thats what you saw all day?

How would you feel about your odds of being the one good one?

If you had made some bad choices in relationships in the past, would you think you could be any better? That you could become one of the good ones? Or would you feel you had lost your chance?

Why do we believe so deeply in our own inherent worth as women but men don’t deserve the same? Why do we think we can consistently grow and change but somehow men are unable to do the same?

I am well aware that a lot of the comments on these posts are about people’s individual experiences and I will never discount them. I will never say that someone shouldn’t have negative feelings towards the people who hurt them. I will never say someone say someone should have to stand by the side of someone who has treated them badly.

I have talked a lot about my experiences with men on this blog, I have talked about a lot of the men in those stories.

I’ve talked about how much I loved them. I have talked about how much I hated them.

I have made the mistake many times of having so much empathy for the men in my life that I sacrificed myself and my own well being in the process.

But I will never become so angry and short sighted by what I have experienced that I believe any man, even the ones I have wrote about, deserves to believe they are worthless. That they deserve to be defined solely by their past actions and cannot change. That they aren’t worth enough to try.

They are not worthless. They never will be.

The feelings we have are still valid. Our experiences will never be discounted. But I’m not talking about toxic relationships right now.

This is about the bigger picture.

This is about men’s individual experiences and feelings being valid too. This is about seeing them as people. This is about giving them the same space we do.

This is about how we talk about men.

Just like us, a lot of men have been hurt, they have been cheated on, they have been left. They have experienced being abused, humiliated, and frightened. I have seen that a lot of them are too embarrassed or ashamed to even admit it.

They’ve been conditioned to think it doesn’t matter. That if they do talk about it, their vulnerability could be equated to weakness. Some, even when they have tried, have been ridiculed or emasculated for it.

My entire blog is about my life experiences, relationships and hurts. I am honest about the mistakes I’ve made and how I have grown from them. I receive nothing but support and kindness.

How many men are writing blogs about their childhood wounds, their growth, and their toxic relationships? How many men are being vulnerable on the internet?

How many would feel like they were even allowed to?

Unprocessed trauma, from childhood or adulthood, often comes out in destructive ways. Anger, violence, infidelity, addiction. There are so many ways someone can hurt themselves and others when something lies under the surface unhealed and unacknowledged. This is not an excuse, it does not make these choices and reactions acceptable, it absolutely does not.

I have made these choices, I have wrote about them. If my blog was authored by a man, would it be taken seriously? Or would you condemn me and define me by my worst choices?

Would you think I couldn’t change?

When men have been hurt, they are often pressured to fight back, fuck off or forget about it. They’re not usually given the tools to actually deal with it, they’re expected to already know how. They’re expected to deal with it on their own. They’re not given a lot of sympathy.

Half the time, people don’t even believe they were actually hurt. I’ve even seen people say they deserved it.

If you thought your hurt didn’t matter, would you even be able to recognize it?

Would you even know what to do about it?

They’re not championed when they’re knocked down and get back up. They’re not usually told how proud someone is of them when they do.

They’re not really exalted for the changes they do make. It’s both expected and not expected of them. Really, it’s a lose, lose.

We seem to think that a man’s worth is defined strictly by what they do. Or what they don’t. Their worth is measured by what they can provide. It’s, honestly, usually tied to what we think of them and the quality of what we receive. It’s tied to what we think we deserve, not necessarily what they do.

Are they not inherently worthy for just being a human being? Could you look at your newborn son and think anything else?

At what age are they no longer allowed to cry? At what age do they no longer deserve respect, they no longer deserve anything, without earning it?

Their worth is not measured by what they can provide. Their worth is not measured by how we feel about them.

Noone ever deserves to feel like they are worthless.

In my career field, I talk to men every single day. The amount of times I have been told, ‘I have never shared this with someone before’ breaks my fucking heart.

Men deserve to feel that when they talk, someone will listen. They deserve to feel like they don’t always have to be the strongest person in the room. They deserve to know they matter. They deserve to feel cared for. They deserve to feel safe.

If men take the chance on opening up, they deserve the respect of actually being heard. If they are vulnerable, we can give them the space to do so without the fear of being shamed.

They have just as many emotional needs as we do. They should never be reduced down to simple minded morons driven by sex, food, sleep. They’re not animals, for fucks sake.

There is not much we can do in a world where resources for mental health are few and far between, we can’t overhaul the entire system in a day. Everyone is stretched thin, there’s not enough help to go around.

We can’t force the men in our individual lives to change and we can’t save them by our own willpower alone. That responsibility is still on them.

But we can change the way we talk about men. We can change the way we talk to men. We can change the way we look at them. We can believe they can change. We can be willing to have more compassion and love for men as a bigger picture.

This is about trying to break the cycle before it even starts.

Men are killing themselves, literally and figuratively, at alarming rates.

No one deserves to feel like they are so inherently defective that their only options are to continue to make the same mistakes, find solace in a bottle, or suffer alone in silence. If someone reading this needs to hear this, you are worth more than that and you deserve more than that.

I have lost almost every man I have ever loved in my life to addiction, suicide, or to the demons they couldn’t shake. They deserved better.

They were human beings. They were fathers, sons, partners, and friends.

We have to change the way we talk about men.