Boys Don’t Cry

Broken. That’s how he felt.

Disrespected. Taken for one dickhead. Hurt.

In his few young years of life, he had experienced a lot of pain. One particular part of his life bringing about a pain that he never wanted to experience again. Yet, this was quickly starting to mirror it in ways that he thought were behind him.

He hadn’t told anyone how he was really feeling. How could he? He was supposed to be the tough guy. I mean “Boys don’t cry”. “Boys don’t show emotions”. “You’re a wasteman if you do”. Or so he’d been told all his life. Whether it was true or not, he wasn’t about to try and find out now, leaving him to be burdened down with it all.

But what good was that doing apart from having him walk around with a smile on his face, whilst being completely broken inside. Inside he was falling apart and had no idea of how to get it back together.

He cried a lot now. The littlest things would see streams of tears flowing down his face, ignoring his efforts in trying to get them to stop. His nose would start running pushing out a gooey watery mess, followed by his chest. Oh the tightening. The tightening he would feel always caused him to struggle to breath. Was it crazy to think that the pain he felt could be felt in his heart? Why else would his body react like this?

It’s funny how when something hurts you so deeply, you physically feel it. It was like the minute he let himself think, his body would just react. He tried to stop thinking and some days it would work. He would go through a couple of days feeling free, but then the ugly truth would come back. It always came back. Always came back with such vengeance.

Why did it have to happen to him? Why did it even have to happen like this? Anything would have been better than this. He gave his all, more than he’d ever given before. He started to open up. He trusted, something he’d struggled with all his life. For the first time in years he decided to trust someone other than himself, and look where it had gotten him.

He didn’t know if and when he was gonna get over it, but what he did know was that never again would he put himself in the same position. He would have never done it like this. He cared enough to not do so. He learn’t the hard way that his expectations of himself, could not be the expectations for those around him. He would forgive, but never forget. He was done with that. He would move on.