Where Does A Man Go When He Needs To Cry?

Where does a man go when he needs to cry? Who can he shed a tear with? When he is at the bottom’s end, who can help him up?

Today, I had a conversation with someone that made me remember a very difficult time in my life. A time when I wanted to quit everything, life included.

I was at rock bottom. I felt that I was worthless. Work lost meaning when it started feeling like I was used. Like, the moment you realise that in the workplace you are just a number, that feeling is very distinctive. In the same breath, I felt very undervalued. For the effort I was bringing to the workplace, they were not paying me enough. The pain of seeing the place you work brag about multimillion, record-breaking profits, yet when you ask for a raise, they tell you that they can’t because of “increasing costs”, that hurts.

The feeling of knowing you are capable of so much more in life, but you are not living to the fullest of those capabilities. People around you are reminding you that you are smart. People around you are telling you that you are intelligent. Yet this smartness, this intelligence to you, is a myth.

The feeling of walking into a room and feeling like you are the smallest in it. And the reason for this is that your boss found a way to instil an inferiority complex in you. For some reason, whatever you do is never good enough. There is always more you can do. You are made to feel stupid for not wanting to hang out with colleagues. You are made to feel like there’s something wrong with you for not wanting to be with people you don’t want to be with.

But you are a man. You can’t share these feelings with anyone. More accurately, you are an African man. You are a sheep. Tears never escape the eyes of a sheep. But when the cold nights hit, you will remember that you are not a sheep. You are a human.

You can’t really tell your girlfriend. She’ll call you weak. She’ll say you are too much. In your heart, you’ll have this perpetual fear that she will leave you for a more stable man. So you choose to suffer in silence. No, not even love can wipe a man’s tears.

You can’t tell your friends. The older I get, the more I hate how secretive my friends are becoming. This secrecy, this sense of keeping things private, this false manhood trait creates an invisible barrier between you and the people you call friends. How can I be your friend if I don’t know your struggles?

Our wars are not physical in today’s world. In ancient days, I’d raise a sword to protect you from death. If I saw you, injured, a hand or leg missing, I’d do everything in my power to get you to safety. Because you are my friend, you are a fellow man I’m locked in within the sacred code of brotherhood.

How is that different from the emotional injuries that we face today? If you are dying from an emotional wound, how can you not trust me that I’ll do everything in my power to try to save you? Our friendship forged in brotherhood, yet you remain sealed off to the world, to me, your brother?

And this is how the world is today. The sad and uncomfortable truth is that if you are a man, you are alone in this cold world. You experience life’s challenges, and it is expected that you plough through them. No one is going to save you. No one is going to help you.

Again, you can be experiencing great pain and share it with a friend. But, after a time, you start feeling like an idiot because this friend will never share what they are experiencing with you. I had a close friend who, when we were in university, we were open towards one another. Suddenly, as the years went by, I now know nothing about him. We can talk about everything. But I have no idea where and how his heart is. How then can I continue to trust you with my heart if you can’t trust me with yours?

I gave up on a woman ever being able to handle a man’s emotions. In my experience, I have never met a woman who can bear the brutal realities that we, men, face. I have had women laugh at my pain. I have had women break up with me, days after I told them the great stress or emotional strain I’d be feeling. I am yet to meet a woman who will have the patience to understand that a man has a heart, too.

Society taught us that a woman can cry, but not a man. You see it on TV shows. There is a reality show on TV that conducts DNA tests on children and fathers. In one episode, the father was devastated, absolutely destroyed when he found out that the daughter that he had raised from childbirth was not his. The daughter was also crushed by this. It was clear that the father wanted to cry, his eyes red and glassy. Yet the host bypassed him and went to the daughter instead. He was left alone to lick his own wounds.

In another reality show, this man was telling his girlfriend that he could no longer be with her. He said that there were moments when he was suicidal. What’s sad about this is that he said he would tell, and she would brush him off. So much so, she said that if he dies, that’s his problem. She was not to blame for him being “weak”. In the same breath, it was revealed that the previous guy that she was with committed suicide while she was with him. She showed no remorse about that.

If you are with a partner, and he or she commits suicide while you are with them, you failed as a partner. If you are with a partner, and he or she says they have suicidal thoughts and he or she says you are not supportive or understanding of how they feel, you have failed as a partner. I have experienced, on two occasions, such situations. And like that girl on that reality show, I was the one who was weak, pathetic and “not man enough” for wanting to kill myself. To them, I can die, they’ll be sad, but they definitely move on.

Being a man is a cruel reality. I don’t want to make this a woman vs man post. It isn’t. Because in the same breath, there are atrocities that women face under the hands of a man. Both genders have the evils that they exhibit towards each other.

However, in the realm of emotions, a man is not allowed to have power. In the realm of emotions, a man is only allowed to be happy and angry. Anything in between, he is weak and foolish.

The truth about being a man is that it is a lonely journey. No one cares about you. Maybe your family. And blessed are you if you have such a family. However, many more do not have such families. That is why it is likely men to be homeless and live on the streets. It is likely men to be alcoholics. It is likely men to become drug addicts. And it is likely men, who, when life squeezes them too hard, they will kill themselves.

Being a man is not easy. Being a man is understanding that you are human, but you are not allowed to be a human with feelings. For if you do, you will never have true friends, you’ll never be accepted in the workplace, and you will definitely never find a woman who will love you.

It is tough being a man. But that is what being a man is. And so, we just bear with it. As difficult as it is.