The following is an essay I wrote for my creative writing class. If you want you could assume that it's 100% true. If you really wanted to. If you read it and would prefer for it not to be true, you could assume that it's 100% not. I try to be accommodating.
Grown Men Don't Cry
By Sir Matthew R. Fife
“It’s
okay, he doesn’t have any feelings. Isn’t that right, Matt?” Brooke said.
I sat there, trying to figure out
how to respond. A million thoughts ran through my mind. I felt my face getting
hot at the statement and all the previous comments said to belittle me. I knew
what she wanted. An outburst. Something to show that what she had said had
gotten to me.
But I refused. To retaliate would
show weakness, it would show that I cared what they thought. As the warm tears
built in my eyes I fought them back with everything I had.
With my emotions firmly in hand I
replied, “That’s right.”
There was a time in my life when an
outburst would have been second nature. Tears came as naturally to me as eating
or breathing. At the drop of a hat I would break down as if the end of the
world had come, finding me unprepared. But I stopped.
I don’t remember if there was a
particular thought or moment when I decided that it was time to stay reserved.
Growing up I kept to myself, spending hours on end with books, my only friends.
No one wanted to hand out with a crybaby. By the time I was a young man I had
put my childhood completely behind me, and with it my tearful ways.
From then on it was a
self-reinforcing cycle. Because I appeared in complete control and even-keeled,
people would rely on me, seeking strength and comfort. The more people relied on
me, the stronger and steadier I needed to be for them, and the more they would
rely on me. No matter what I did I couldn’t break free, so I shackled my
emotions more and more, becoming the absolute master of them, bending them to
my will.
So it wasn’t that I didn’t have
emotions. Instead, I had controlled them so tightly and so completely that the
more expressive and irrational of them had ceased to rebel. They plodded from
day to day, eyes to the ground, broken and defeated. Sometimes when I wondered
if they were still there they would bubble up, trying to force their way to the
surface, and I would have to struggle against them to force them back into the
corners of my soul to which they had been banished.
I knew that they were part of me,
but I did not think them important. Not then, at least.
I was seventeen. My phone rang. On
the other end of the line my girlfriend was sobbing, asking me to come over, to
comfort her. To fulfill my assigned role. So I answered the call.
When I arrived she threw herself
into my arms, pulling me inside. Barney, the dog that was as old as she was, had
finally reached the end. Due to an enormous amount of health problems ranging
from tumors to blindness and everything in between, they had decided that there
was no more need for further suffering. Barney was being put down that day.
As I knelt on the ground beside him,
one arm around my girlfriend, the other stroking Barney’s shaggy hair, the
tears welled up from nowhere. The hot drops of sorrow overflowed onto my cheeks
and dripped down the tip of my nose. I made no noise, simply crying silently
next to my sobbing girlfriend.
When the time came to load Barney
into the back of the van to take him to the veterinarian, I pulled my tears
back and stood firm, a pillar of strength to which my girlfriend clutched. The
time for tears had passed, and the time to comfort others had come.
Several months later my phone rang
again. On the other end my girlfriend did not cry this time, but still
requested that I come over. I thought nothing of it. She had just returned from
a weeklong trip to Michigan and clearly wanted to see me.
I first noticed that no one else was
home when I stepped through the front door. Not normal, but not without
precedent. I was greeted exuberantly by Gracie, her other dog that had just
months before lost its best friend. Dogs have always found my company rather
pleasant. I scratch heads very well.
After disengaging me from Gracie, my
girlfriend led me upstairs to her room, a place I had never gone nor wanted to
go. It was the attic bedroom, a little tight, but cozy. It was a room filled
with color, unlike the rest of her house. Most of the houses in the
neighborhood all looked the same, leaving something to be desired in terms of
aesthetic value, but this room was unlike anything else. It was comfortable.
We sat on the edge of the bed as she
told me she wanted to talk. She felt like our relationship had isolated her,
keeping her from making friends. She also felt like that was my fault. I did
not list off the friends that she did have regardless of dating me, though I
desperately wanted to. IF my recollection still serves me like it should, she
mentioned some other failings of mine before finally getting to the point. Our
eight-month relationship had reached its end.
By this point she was crying. Maybe
the shock prevented it, maybe all the barriers I had erected inside my heart
and mind helped, but no matter how much I wanted to, I could not cry. I had
spent a significant amount of time with this girl, being more emotionally
invested that I had ever been before. I just sat there, staring at the wall in
front of me. I wouldn’t even look at her. She sat there beside me, facing me,
silently pleading with me to react. Mustering up everything I could I managed to
alter my breathing, put my head down, and squeeze out a tear or two from my
unnaturally dry eyes.
I remember saying sorry, but I’m
still not sure what I was sorry about. Possibly the end of the relationship,
for being smothering in her mind, or for not being able to react like she
wanted me to.
Somewhere, deep down, I know that I
can still cry. I don’t know how it happens, or even why. Why should the end of
the life of a dog that I had barely known affect me more than the end of one of
the first significant romantic relationships of my life? I have never cried at
the end of a relationship or the death of a loved one. When things break and
end, I move on. Even when I sometimes wish I could unbreak what I’ve broken,
when tears could be the salve that the wound desperately craves, when I want to
mourn with those that mourn, I still cannot let the tears come to my eyes.
I’ve
seen a lot of people cry in my lifetime of giving comfort and being an
available shoulder and a pair of strong arms. I’ve lifted and strengthened and
listened and helped and hugged. But emotional connection gets harder and harder
with every passing moment. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a prison full of
emotions begging to be fully released to run wild and free. But I am the
listener, not the speaker. In my mind needing others would somehow weaken my
ability to be needed.
Someone
once said that grown men don’t cry. But maybe that should change. I can think
of no reason why in order to be a real man one must be only emotionally
receptive and never expressive. I can think of no reason why crying should be a
sign of weakness. I can think of no reason why a grown man should be exactly
like I am. Yet the prison doors remain barred. The chains remain strong and
firmly in place. Somewhere in that deep place a part of me lies that I lost
long ago, but I know if I unlock those doors I can never lock them again.
Even-keeled.
Steady. Firmly under control. It’s all just another way of
saying cold, distant, and inaccessible. Grown men don’t cry.
