I’m sure it’s no news that I was stubborn as a kid, but in my defense, I was always with my brothers and they taught me so much without even trying. I also became close to my brothers’ friends, who later became my own friends. One of them in particular became more like a brother.
At a point, I started looking up to him because he was very intelligent and excelled in all that he did. I mean, that’s how it looked from the outside. But one particular day, I saw him smoking. Or should I say caught him smoking because he looked like he was trying to hide it from me? I asked him why he was hiding it from me and then he said because he didn’t want to spoil that perfect image I had of him.
I then asked him why he was doing it if he knew it wasn’t a good thing because the fact that he was thinking about his image made me realize that he knew what he was doing was wrong. And then he said that was how he dealt with bad days.
I was very confused, so I kept asking so many questions and then he said something like men don’t cry so they have to do whatever it takes to tone their pain down. The moment I heard that, I realized he hasn’t just been smoking, he's also been drinking alcohol and other things I don’t even want to mention.
We had a full one-hour, if not more, argument about how I believed it was okay to cry as a man. I made him understand that it was totally okay to rant or be vulnerable to someone you trust as a man, but he kept saying no. He really believed that as a man, the moment you rant to someone and say whatever is bothering you, you lose your man ego.
He then raised the weed he was smoking and said that was the way. I walked away from his house and up till today, he has never seen me again. I also made him know that I don’t judge him for having that perspective on how to deal with his issues. But I just made him know that I couldn’t be around someone with that mindset.
I always say that I saw how beautiful it was for my mom’s friends to be around us when we were growing up. It was really too cool to have them as amazing uncles and aunts, and I really want that for my children. And so if you, as a future uncle of my kids, think that you’d rather become an alcoholic than cry as a man, fine. I don’t judge you at all, but for the sake of my kids, I’ll just keep my distance.
Kids are just innocent and I would never forgive myself if I consciously allowed this person to talk these things into the heads of my kids for them to grow up thinking crying makes a man weak, but alcohol is the truth and the way or smoking makes them Superman. No! Not in my backyard.
Images are mine