What Does It Feel Like to Be a Man?

Vulnerability means losing everything.

Hafiz was asked: what does it feel like to be a man? His answer:

“My dear,
I am not so sure.”

Then she said,
“Well, aren’t you a man?”

And this time I replied,
“I view gender
As a beautiful animal
That people often take for a walk on a leash
And might try to enter in some odd contest
To try to win prizes.

“My dear,
A better question for Hafiz
Would have been,

“How does it feel to be a heart?”

For all I know is Love,
And I find my heart Infinite
And Everywhere!

I’m afraid I differ from the great poet. I know what it feels like to be a man, and it is this:

I don’t know how to express myself emotionally — and I mean truly express myself —without feeling like I’m going to lose absolutely everything as a result.

Everyone tells men that they want us to be more vulnerable, more emotional, more honest. I call bullshit. They want something suitable for a rom-com. They want male emotions but tamed, like poodles. They want the show-ready version, groomed and bred into some decorative fluff. They don’t want the wall-punching rage, the terror behind the drug use, the absolute loneliness, the fear that yawns like an abyss.

I can’t count the number of times I expressed the truly raw and scary stuff beneath the surface and it went horribly wrong.

When I expressed my deep, secret doubts about my Christian faith, I lost my best friend in the world.

When I told the people closest to me that I was gay, they wept and were afraid I was going to die of AIDS.

When, at the darkest time of my life, I confessed to my best friend that I almost did heroin for the first time at a threesome, she punched me, hard, and then sobbed in my arms.

When I confessed to those closest to me that I wanted to kill myself and had a plan to do so, they emotionally fled, terrified.

When one of my best friends in college noticed cuts that she suspected to be self-inflicted, she flew into a rage and hit me.

When the people tasked with protecting me as a young person discovered the depth of my depression and self-harm, they retreated from me in horror when what I needed and wanted most was their warmth and reassurance.

When I tried telling those I trusted what it was like to live in the aftermath of a shooting in which I watched two of my friends get killed, I was told that I was being dramatic and asked why I hadn’t gotten over it already.

All of these reactions are understandable to me. It’s enraging to see someone you love hurt themself, and it’s only natural to be frightened of what you don’t understand.

But the lesson, over and over and over again throughout my life, from boyhood to manhood, is to never be angry, never have doubt, never have a single fucking moment of weakness. Never ask for help, never let anyone see you cry in the middle of the night, and never tell anyone what you truly think or feel. Because my inner world, as a man, is simply too ugly, too frightening, too unmanageable.

At my darkest moments, I wonder if people shouldn’t want male vulnerability at all. It’s ugly. It’s brutal. It’s hideous with rage and self-torment. It isn’t suitable for polite society. And men aren’t wrong to feel that they might lose everything if they share their inner pain. we believe it because we’ve experienced it.

So it stays locked away. The inevitable result is that I often hurt, and I humiliate myself for feeling hurt. It’s embarrassing and shameful to hurt. I fall down a death spiral of accusing myself of all kinds of terrible things simply for feeling.

It’s the relational stuff that hurts the most. I want a mentor but can’t find one; a friend moves away and I’m afraid I’ll lose him forever; someone says something deplorable about me and I’m deeply wounded. I’ve had all of these feelings, and I hate myself for them, tell myself that they’re stupid, that I should just get over them and be fine.

Looking back, I realize that this hatred of my emotions fueled my substance use in school and my decade-long habit of self-injury. From the ages of 16 to 26, I cut myself, sometimes daily, and sometimes severely enough to need medical attention. My thighs and upper arms are a fading latticework of scars.

The cutting was a way of channeling the unacceptable emotions I was feeling inward so I didn’t have to show it to another human being. I see the same pattern in so many other men. They resort to drug abuse, alcohol, excessive video games, or sexual conquest — all tourniquets to keep themselves from bleeding out in public.

I haven’t self-injured for years, despite how much I’m still occasionally overwhelmed by the urge. Writing and exercise have taken its place. Hard exercise burns off emotion like steam, and writing is safe because I don’t know you. I can’t lose someone I don’t know. if I do know you, I don’t know that you are reading this right now. Writing is a way to have some kind of human connection and recognition without the risks of vulnerability. It’s the alternative to telling people to their faces what I think and how I feel.

So what does it feel like to be a man? To hurt and hate yourself for hurting.

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Addendum

I know that this is a raw, brutal piece. And yes, I’ve been going through a challenging time. The past few months have been hell for me, and I wrote this piece at a low point.

So I just want to reassure everyone: I’m not 100% ok right now, but I will be, and I’m getting help, both professionally and communally. I’m also not in my 20s anymore, and I haven’t engaged in the destructive behaviors described in this article for years. I have no intention of returning to them.

I’m working to learn how to communicate my emotions with people I trust and unlearn the patterns that make me clamp down. It feels like pulling teeth, but I’m getting better at it. Several loving friends have coaxed me out of my man cave as if they are taming a feral cat. They’ve earned my trust and helped me communicate my feelings of rage, loneliness, and fear. With that comes immense relief, and I’m absurdly grateful to them.

I carry mountains of resentment over living in a culture that continually insists that men should be more honest and vulnerable, but seems completely unequipped to handle the inevitable result.

This might be regional. I’m in the American South and was raised in a conservative Christian setting. But I also know for a certainty that many other men struggle with this reality and feel at a complete loss for how to manage it.

I hesitated to publish this piece. But, given that I write about men’s issues, I thought I would rip the bandaid off and give some insight and solidarity to this particular experience of masculinity.

But that’s just me. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and I might feature them in an upcoming post. Subscribe if you haven’t already, share this post with friends to rise on the leaderboard, and join the cult … I mean Discord server.