ADAM'S RIB BY LEWIS NGUNYI
You know how you go through life, then you (inevitably) hit a stumbling block. It happens, right? It happens. You look around, lost, scouring the Internet for help. It isn't situation-specific enough, so in your search for help, you add "for men". You bump into the proverbial "it's okay to cry" like you needed the Internet's permission to shed tears you carry in your own body, that stings from your own tear ducts. Well, maybe you don't know...
Beyond the permission to cry, I think men need a lot more structured systems through dark days. We don't just want someone to hang out with in the darkness, a shoulder to cry on - we could also do with a torch, a map, and maybe a sword...Scratch the whole list, actually. I'd put the sword before the torch, but that's just me.
The last time a friend told me to attend a "mental health workshop" I immediately understood why people do drugs. I couldn't possibly sit through another session about how men were entirely responsible for the chaos they went through, implicitly, at least. That the reason men kill themselves was because they didn't talk. Or because they kept their problems hidden. In a world that had declared masculinity the universal villain, and put the needs of the male children as secondary to the needs of the girls. They would sacrifice my entire generation of men to offset the history of gender inequality off the backs of today's boys.
The next time someone told me to attend a mental health session, it was Jess. Now...Jess doesn't strike me as the person to invite me to pointless activities, especially when she personally does it. I attended, more out of curiosity than the belief that this could actually materialise into anything useful. Skepticism has been responsible for far worse decisions, so mine gets a pass here.
Immediately Trish and Nic started talking, I could feel a sense of empathy I hadn't experienced in any mental health session before. They weren't interested in disagreeing with our lived experiences, or correcting what they deemed an inappropriate view of the world, based off our own experiences. What they didn't understand, they sought clarity. This was something new. Boys I'd been friends with for years said things about them I was hearing for the first time. It was...vulnerable. Very, very strange.
I got home and felt excited. We would meet again two weeks later, and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why good things are intervaled (not a word, usually, but it is now) that far apart.
I have since skipped two sessions. Both, I was working out of town, and couldn't delegate. Both sessions, I have counted as a net loss for me. The boys sit through chilly evenings and indulge each other in details of their lives so personal, we share a strange solidarity in our sadness, on most evenings.
On these evenings, one can let go. One can slip and not panic, because arms woven together in a web of brotherhood would hold you up. On these evenings, we laugh at things people would never experience. On these evenings, we understand each other, we accept, but not just that...we respect each other for what they are, and more, for what they are with what little they got. They say you're dealt the cards you're dealt. I don't know which system designed the Adam's rib card, but is sure is a cheat code. Maybe "talking about it" isn't such a bad idea, after all. But it sure does help to talk with the right people, in the right context and environment.
Jess, Trish and Nic are part of the gang now. They're our boys. And they are yet to give us permission to cry. Imagine what will happen when they finally unlock that level. ;)