TrainAmazing

(marathon run from my apartment to Santa Monica pier and back)

I believed for the longest time (and some parts of me inside still want to cling onto) the idea that men should not be expressive. That letting people in on their internal life is weakness.

And to be sure, in my experience, people, other men especially are not all that open to hearing you talk about your feelings. That’s not in the script for us.

The machine has to keep turning. The machine has to be well oiled and churning faster and more efficiently, while feelings make one slow down or even stop to consider.

It’s not only been the case with men in my life. Several girlfriends have either called me ‘too sensitive’ or said that I’m ‘not their idea of a man.’ And I used to be so insecure about this type of stuff. To me, it got down to the existential core of my existence. ‘Am I deeply flawed to the point that I’ll always be alone?’ ‘Is it even possible for me to have deep connection?’ ‘Maybe I just have to pretend my whole life and always keep everyone at a distance so they don’t reject me for being too “sensitive.”’ ‘Is life even worth living?’ These are all running themes since I was younger.

My parents were no respite from the confusion. My father left the family for another woman when I was 9 years old. He came back in the picture later, gaining joint custody while living in a condo with his mistress who would be passed out on the couch with wine glass in hand on many occasions.

Mother hooked up with and swiftly moved a completely unknown southern man from her work office into the townhouse I called home. Also an alcoholic who beat me and generally made me feel unwanted and alien. My mom witnessed the beatings and did absolutely nothing to stop them. I was completely alone. I slept with a knife under my pillow because I thought he may come into my room in the middle of the night and try to dispatch of me.

The panic attacks started around 12 or 13 when I was in middle school. I couldn’t understand why I was full on terrified to go to school. I was clingy with my friends and romantic interests. Puberty and adolescence was extremely confusing because I had absolutely zero guidance. I was made to feel by my parents that sexuality was shameful, bad, never discussed. This age was the beginning of a terrifyingly long arc of simultaneous brainwashing by both my parents and society that men’s feelings are nothing. They should not exist and any deviation from the rule must be put down immediately.

This amounts to death while still technically alive. I’ve seen the advancement of feminism in what seems to me to be an outspoken, retributive fashion which completely overlooks the plight of men. It does nothing to resolve the simultaneous mandate that men be made into objects, too. Objects of production.

‘Providers.’ Haha I really laugh at that term now. I bought into it for so long. No no the word you are looking for is ‘machines.’ Un-feeling robots.

To be clear, I am all for gender equality. However that must apply to both genders. Men suffer just as much as women. And a quick online search shows that nearly 80 percent of completed suicides are men. This is no small statistical trend. In a study, if 51% is the result, that is marked as significant. We are talking 80 percent here. But that doesn’t get discussed because, again, the machine has to keep churning efficiently as possible and we have to keep feeding men into it because they are the gender that is most gullible to the idea that they don’t deserve to have their feelings honored, heard and respected. And the script that’s given us in order to belong in this world actively censors those of us who do try to speak out for ourselves.

If you tell men that BRAVERY, COURAGE and HONOR are the result of self-sacrifice, they believe it. It drives us because then other people will respect us right? A woman will maybe love us if she thinks of us this way, or friends will respect us if we show ‘how much we can take.’ Maybe, like David Goggins, we will get famous proving to everyone in the world how much we can hurt ourselves and keep going. That’s a real man, right? That’s impressive, right? That’s MANLY, right?

Stick a uniform on us, send us through basic training for more intense brainwashing to go off to do a corrupt government’s bidding and we’ll achieve a higher station in society. But if you disagree and defect from the military, because you learn that you are just a pawn, then you will get a ‘dishonorable discharge’ or serve prison time. Again there’s that word ‘honor’ being thrown around to control mostly men. ‘Honor’ is the bone or the frisbee thrown out for males that we have to go retrieve to prove how much of a good boy we are. Please please please just pat us on the head and tell us we’re ’good boys.’ That means everything to us.

That keeps us going so we can keep doing more self-abnegating, self-destructive work.

But think about it, where has this gotten us? Do you really think this mechanistic view of humanity has served us and the planet? Has it served interpersonal relationships? Has it served anyone other than the ultra-rich? That special segment of the population that is idolized even though their sociopathic tendencies play out right before our eyes each and every day.

Where are we going here? Why? Sorry but no. No, you cannot convince me at this point that teaching boys from the time they are little that they have to be ‘self-sacrificing’, ‘fearless’ whatever the hell you wanna call it is good for humanity. It’s harming not only our species but all the other ones too. As far as we know at the time of writing this, we are the only planet with life on it in the entire universe and this terminator style mindset of getting work done is absolutely following the plot of the movie. I won’t stand for it anymore.

I love who I am. I love my feelings, my thoughts, concerns, daydreams, vision of a more empathetic future. I don’t eat animals. I love art. I’m done believing the male archetypes. Frankly they are a means to someone else’s end. And as I have grown older I’ve seen how self-interested people can truly be so now I am scrubbing myself of all the toxic programming and taking back Matthew.

And I DO love fitness. I DO love being STRONG. But not to prove anything. Because it makes me feel amazing. It makes me healthy and happy! It impresses me what I see in the mirror or through the camera lens because the human body itself is a masterpiece.