Content

There is a clear distinction between a person who is being vulnerable and someone who is guarded.

We can all see it, I'm sure.

At least I can.

Unless, of course, that guard is mine.

Mistaking myself for being kind, I can frankly be fake to others when it comes to matters of appeal.

It's not my fault, it's just how I'm wired.

When you're trained to think that your sense of satisfaction comes with doing something, you feel the need to do something just to give yourself that permission sometimes.

Imagine that, giving yourself permission to feel good.

Not just to feel good, but to feel in general. 

Many men or, dare I say, humans indoctrinated as supposed men, are in this boat.

Their souls are taken from them and they become slaves to the cause of becoming a man.

What is a man?

A miserable little pile of secrets.

But enough talk, have at you!

Jokes aside, I think there's some truth to those words.

The concept of a man may well be a concept of legend in my mind.

Unattainable. Unachievable. Unrealistic at best.

An ideal.

If only one could be so brave, enigmatic, and strong.

If only one could be enough for everyone that they could rescue us from the cause of needing help.

If only one could be enough for themselves such that they didn't feel the need to be helped.

If only one could be a robot.

Frankly, that's what the ideal form of a man was in my time of maturation.

A man is supposed to embody everything and show nothing. 

As a peculiar child just trying to find their place, I struggled to fit into the molds I poured myself in.

We live in a world where the boxes we check when we label others indicates me as a man.

When I fill out paperwork, I adhere to this assignment given to me and, in so doing, conscript to the values and tenants around being one.

I'm going to stop and say what I feel here when I say that I do not feel I embody that.

Not even for a second do I truly relate to it.

At least how we define it. At least past the surface of my epidermis. 

If what exists beyond that matters.

Hint: it does.

Gender is a construct anyway, so why am I trying to ascribe it when I don't care anyway?

I suppose I care because others care.

It matters to people that one acts the way one presumes they would based on what you look like.

I'm not sure why there's so much expectation we place one another to conform to our expectations.

Perhaps the content we've been exposed to in life gives us a sad predisposition of how things are.

Perhaps what we lack when we look at each other on a screen is the context to our content.

Perhaps the context that comes with knowing a person shows us there's more than what meets the eye.

When we spend more time focusing on how we are being perceived over how we are feeling, we are inauthentic to the cause of being ourselves. 

It is only by crossing that threshold that exists between having a wall up and showing ourselves do we see that 'me' was actually always the way to be.

Just try it and see.

Who knows, you may feel good to say it feels good to be me.

Or maybe that's just me.

Doctor Seuss, out.