You Are Such Good People, How Could You Not?

I'm committing myself to feeling every feeling, to falling apart in the open, and to hiding nothing. A good friend's comment on my last post pulled me into tears so quickly that I surprised even myself. I decided that I didn't want to hide that. It was her words that I'll do my best to remind myself of, "I have faith that you guys will land on your feet..you are such good people, how could you not?"

The tears come so quickly lately, and I feel almost half the man I'm very likely supposed to be. I can't shake the weight on my chest, and it's so palpable that it hurts. It frightens me on top of the heaping piles of other stuff. I can't turn things off unless I'm asleep. I can't flick a switch. I feel as though I have to hold my head up high but all I really want to do is cry...I mean really cry, like hard, sobs, and shuddering shoulders, but it doesn't come, and I can't force it to. I want so desperately for everything to be okay, and although I know that it will, it doesn't feel like it, and I feel forever altered by this. I feel oh-so different, so dented.

I feel eight years old and I just want someone to make it all go away. I feel very much like the child that I might sit down and steer through something similar, only my own advice just isn't working. So I'll try to remember Beth's words, and I'll try to shut the garden gate, and I'll breathe. I'll try to just breathe and hope and breathe and hope and breathe.

I don't want to hide what this is. I don't want this place, these three years of typing, to be false in any sense. I want Zoey to reach back through these memories and see me...both the good and the bad...and the very bad. And that might be part of the problem...I've tied myself so tightly to the kind of man that I want to be, that I haven't left much room for life to shape that image...and in the end it's life that shapes and smoothes that rock. It's not about what we want to be, it's what we are. I won't be embarrassed by this falling apart in front of everyone. I won't apologize for that. I might be the strongest man alive for doing it. I might be everything I want to be because I am myself right now, in this embarrassing moment I am exactly the kind of person I hoped that I was. I am not who you think I am, nor am I who I thought I was. I just am, and these are my tears, and these are my fears, and I won't let my words deceive me. I won't lie to you or myself.

I always wanted to be proud of who I was, and although that doesn't pay the bills, it does fill me with hope. This too will pass, I know that it will, but not before I open my head and heart and ask that you not judge me while I fall apart here. I could do it in private but I would feel like a coward. I am fragile, as any man might be, and I am damaged, as every man pretends he isn't, and I am honest about it, as most men are not. Does it feel weird to type here, of course, and am I nervous that once I hit "publish post" it will be too late to take this little collapse off the table that is our understanding of one another, yes, but it won't deter me from clicking that button. These feelings, right or wrong, need to go somewhere and this is where they will come to a rest. If only to remind me later that everything did turn out okay, and as Beth suggested, "you are such good people, how could they not?

They will, but in the meantime, pass the tissue and turn out the lights. Quiet please. I'd like it to be nice and quiet while I fall apart.