Dudes and feelings.

“You need Jesus, mother f$%#^…

…No really. Do you have a higher power? Because if not, you need one. Mine’s a straight up ‘G.'”

True story. [Clearly he knows Jesus…because he is the only “straight up G.” Hehe] Conversations that go on among a group of young adult male addicts. I couldn’t make this stuff up. Bizarre.

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It’s happened again (as if it ever stopped)…my personal life and professional life came colliding into one as I was transferred to the young adult addiction cottage this week.

Sometimes life is hilarious. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it is really not at all, but the only solution is laughter.

Tuesday, as I sat among ten other 18-twenty-something year olds, I tried to ignore the constriction in my chest as one told a story that I imagine paralleled the stories he would have told in his recovery. I saw him, there, with me, tears streaming down his face…grieving the people he’d lost, the life he’d lost, and the aching fear and insecurity he could never shake.

I had a pity party that day. My conversation with God went something like this on my ride home:

“I don’t want to remember that addiction is a mental illness! I don’t want to acknowledge that the brain is an organ and that it goes haywire just like every other organ in our bodies. My heart is not in agreement with my head that it’s an illness. Nope. It’s not. It just feels like evil. Pure evil. And pain. That’s all. So I will not be compassionate today.”

God allowed it…but he wouldn’t let me stay there. The next day he moved me into the all men’s group where my fear was so set off–the deep fear, way down at my toes–that my crap came welling up to the surface.

Codependecy, she’s a slut. “Oh, of course I’m here. You’re all sick. I can help you. I know how to help. Let me help you. I CAN HELP YOU DAMN IT.” 

Yep. I’m sick too…well…I don’t believe that’s true. I also have unhealthy, sick ways I can live…and I choose every moment whether to live out of health or not. Every damn day.

[Side note: I always give my eighteen year old brother a hard time for the ridiculous lingo and {lack of} conversation skills he seems to carry on with. Ehhhhh…boys are strange birds sometimes. I had a moment where I wondered if I had been transported into a gang bangers club when I walked through the door…nope, just a bunch of young, white boy “junkies.” (They’re title use-not mine. It’s so not ‘PC.’) Dear brother, I apologize. It’s not just you.]

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So tonight is for the boys, the guys, the men…I generally have a lot of bones to pick with the male population. (For really great reasons. Those XYs who have been in my life–both not by my choice and by my choice–have not been the most stellar so it makes sense.) 

BUT…tonight I want to show you some love. 

I’ve sat in that room now for two days…a total of almost three hours. Watching those guys run, skip, hop jump, bounce, cuss, scream, walk, and stomp around their emotions is insanely…insane.

Trying to get them to even consider the acknowledgement of an underlying painful emotion to their anger or drug use…is harder than…gosh, harder than a lot of things I have ever tried to do. And this isn’t important because I am a woman and I want you to be “emotional” like me.

No. I just want you to have the freedom to be human.

I want you to be able to be honest about the fact that you have the normal range of emotions just like everyone else and that is okay so you don’t have to freaking numb everyone of them to pretend they don’t exist. It’s hurting you. I have proof. Being knocked off your prince charming horse or your warrior horse for battle and being able to acknowledge that is hurt like shit and that you’re no lesser of a person for that…well, that’s important.

So I want to apologize…on behalf of our culture. I want you to be strong (but not immortal). I want you to know how to lead (but also how to admit when you need help). I want you to be gentlemen (that doesn’t have an exception). I want you to like sports (if that’s your thing, if not then rock on too). I want you to know how to be respectful (and know how to be respected in the truest meaning of the word). I want you to know how to care for a woman (that just is what it is). 

I also want you to be able to acknowledge your emotions without being called a “pussy.” I want you to be able to cry without feeling like a “screw up” or like “less of a man.” I want you to be able to say you’re disappointed without being mocked for acting like a woman. I want you to be able to say you’re scared without someone asking you what happened to your penis.

We’ve done it–men, women. Women, we’ve done it to you. Men, you’ve done it to yourselves. And it’s unfortunate and sad. 

I won’t shame you for not being in touch with your emotions. But I also won’t say that it’s okay to stay there.

You must be human in order to survive.

I apologize for the ways in which we’ve failed each other.

Hugs,

From one normally emotion-filled being to another.