Until I Get Married

Cry if you must, men. Tears hurt when we hold them back.

This crying thing is not a woman thing; it’s a human thing. We can believe real men cry. We can believe real men don’t. What’s absolute is real men go through some heavy, heavy stuff, man. So let us not be machines here. Let us be men and if we are men who cry, I suggest some company. Tears hurt when we shed them by ourselves.

To any man who can’t remember the last time they cried, keep the streak alive as long as you can. Be blessed in the pursuit. Tears hurt when they’re unfamiliar. Take it from me, a self-admitted crier who has seen other men of the age of facial hair and being addressed as Mr. cry, the tears of grown men shock and awe. Those tears are the maps to the foreign places of a man’s heart and when we see them, we know we have never been there before and he probably hasn’t either.

Still we can’t be afraid to go where the maps say. Nor can we be too prideful to ask for directions on how to get out. Just let the tears go. Crying is not a gauge to measure one’s manhood it’s a gauge to measure the magnitude of what just happened. And if what happened moved us to tears, let us not dodge. Just let the tears go.

Men are taught not to cry, never taught how to deal with life’s greatest joys and greatest pains. Men are taught tears don’t bring people back and they don’t make people stay, just asked why even cry about it in the first place?

Well, I cry because I’m not a machine.

I’m a man.

Tears hurt when I hold them back.

This past weekend, my boys and I lost our best friend, Enoch “Trey” Tims III, in a tragic car accident. All of us received the news on Saturday and all of us are still trying to make sense of it in our own way. I know personally, I have been in an emotional stupor since I received the news, trying to figure out just, everything, man.

Originally, I had this idea to do something on male friendship. How important it is to all men, how important it is to me, but so far, I can’t do anything but think about the fact that my boy is no longer with the rest of my boys. There’s one less of us, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. I want to write through it, like I do most of my life, but I can’t, not right at this moment.

Sometime today  (or maybe tomorrow), I’m going to get it together, and write something. It might be about him, it might be about something else, but right now, I have nothing to say except for this:

People who found out about my loss have emailed me, texted me, DM’d me and whenever they have, they always preface it by saying, “Sorry for reaching out to you like this, but…” DON’T BE SORRY. Never ever underestimate what the power of words can do.

I am not one of those people who separates the way a message was delivered from the message itself. I appreciate all the condolences given no matter where they come from. Others may feel differently about this, but I don’t. Shit, I need the words. I need the love. They’re all I got right now.

So thank you to all who have reached out. Your texts, emails, direct messages, Facebook wall posts, and BBMs, are all appreciated, kept, and read repeatedly.

As for my boys and I, we’re going to make it through this the way we’ve made it through the past ten years of our friendship. Together.