Monday 25 September 2017

Boys.

I don't think I have any particularly "masculine" friends. I never have. Or, at least, I've never had a male friend who doesn't defy some sort of gender norm. I imagine I wouldn't get on very well with a man who felt he had to cling desperately onto his masculinity. I'd feel too sorry for him.

It's funny though, despite their brilliance, my most sensitive male friends are still sheepish. There's the self-consciousness of having mostly female friends, or of enjoying "feminine" things, conversations, feelings. I don't think they're ashamed as such, just aware that they are on the outside of a very small box.

I don't think femininity is as emotionally and mentally harmful as masculinity. Not in the way that these opposites are drummed into boys and girls. It scares me, really terrifies me, to think that boys are still taught to suppress feelings, to not cry, to keep things on the inside. As a great believer in the power of crying, of the release it can bring, I can't bear to imagine what it must feel like for a man who must not cry.

I'm not sure how to go about it. How to go about encouraging my male friends, encouraging any identifying male that I know, to carry on being human rather than masculine. I want to make sure that they bring boys into the world who are not afraid of crying, of expressing, of being. I always find it funny, funny sad, that to be a man is to suppress feeling, and therefore to suppress being.

I want to always make sure that my friends who are guys know that they can be entirely expressive in my presence. They can always cry, they can always talk. They can always just be.


Friday 15 September 2017

I'm an okay person.

How do you love yourself? Is it in the way that you look? The way that you smile? How many goals you've achieved? How good you are as a person?

I think that I love myself in a number of ways. Not as vanity, not as narcissism. I think that sometimes I can fully appreciate myself. I have faults, I do the wrong thing, I make mistakes. But I can forgive myself. I can feel happy in my own skin. I can enjoy being alive with the body and the brain that I have.

I say this like it comes easily to me. I've said before in other posts that often it's a challenge. I can also hate myself.

A year ago I looked at my naked body in the mirror and I told myself to never hate it or myself ever again. I told myself I was brilliant. I told myself to love everything that I am.

Several months later I spent a long and painful time doing the exact opposite. I didn't feel good. I was off kilter. I can't remember if I was comparing myself to other people. I probably was. I can't remember all the different things I didn't like about myself, what I was over-analysing.

It seems silly now that I feel safe in myself again. I'm an okay person. Most people are. It's good to be aware of your flaws so that you can be good to other people. You might be rude sometimes, you might not listen. But God help you if you hate yourself. It takes a lot to come back from that deep, dark hole.

Saturday 9 September 2017

The end of a friendship.

I've lost friends before. Not to death, thank God, but via the tidal wave that is time. Some friends I naturally grew apart from, some friends left me, very few friends I fell out with. Each friend that I've lost I still love in the time before we stopped knowing each other well. My love for old friends is frozen in time, it can't continue or grow, it just stays still like smiles in a picture. My friendships are probably captured forever as just that; smiling and frozen. A relic, to someone, one day. Or nothing but something to me. 

Lost friendships are always sad. I mourn lost friends still even if it was good for the relationship to end. Friends, more than lovers, feel like they should last forever. But I know that that's not true now. Some friendships I have I know will last forever, others I know will be swept away by time. I feel sad even for those that haven't gone yet. As if I anticipate myself remembering my time with that person, or that group of people, and mourning a lost thing. 

It's okay to lose friends. It's natural and normal. It is always just terribly sad.