Uncorking

The past few weeks have been a serious reminder for me of how difficult it can be for a man to feel. I don't mean to say that we don't have any feelings. Quite the contrary. In fact, these past few weeks have served to throw in my face just how much I do feel, and how difficult that is. Allow me to ramble a little.

This is Ozzie. He's been living with Kayley, Hank, and me since this past July. As you can clearly see, he's a really cute dog. He's just turned two years old, and as most of those around me know, Ozzie is dying. He was diagnosed with an aggressive lymphatic cancer two weeks ago and is really beyond effective intervention. Shitty, right?

The experience has obviously been difficult. Anyone who knows Kayley and me also knows that our dogs are our family. They get Christmas presents, sleep on our bed, and have never been to a kennel. Watching Ozzie fight against something we know he can't beat has dredged up many years of feelings buried deep in the sticky sediment of my emotional avoidance. Again... Shitty.

However, a interesting side-effect of this admittedly shitty situation is that I'm in a somewhat heightened emotional place, something new for me. As boys and men, society takes a clear stance about the role of emotions: Don't feel them. Feelings are for women and gay men. Any self-respecting straight man would not cry, especially not about a dog. Unfortunately, I apparently missed that memo, as I've had more crying sessions about this dog than I ever (and I mean ever) remember having.

This development seems to me a double-edged sword. On one hand, I am studying counseling psychology, so one could assume that having a visceral experience of a range of emotions would lead me to be a more empathic therapist. However, the shame that we're taught at any expression of feelings outside of anger is inseparably linked to my sense of masculinity. Do I know it's bullshit? Yes. That doesn't change the fact that I'm terrified that with this sense of affective awakening that I'm going to unexpectedly burst into tears around my friends and coworkers and thus lose any sense of control over myself, leaving me with unending work to prove that despite my "weakness," I'm still manly. (Please see William Pollack's Real Boys for more on the shame of male emotional socialization. I've only just started but it's really cool.)

In any case, I admit that it's been somewhat relieving to exhale and cry out some of my years of anger and frustration about sickness and death. Even if this uncorking has left me feeling at best unstable, I am on some level grateful that I'm getting to develop a more complete understanding of myself and the process we're going through with Ozzie. Maybe someday we men will cry without shame. Not today. But today I'll cry anyway.