Gentleness,
Wide shoulders, taut with muscle. Large, adult, and yet crying like a child.
What does do I do with tears that I refuse to shed on behalf of another?
That I hold back because I don't know where the lines of doing so with integrity lie?
There are those who see another and think of their strength.
I don't know what strength means. It seems like something so objective, so grand. There is do or die. There is survival. Strength breeds good traits, and strength breeds bad ones.
For, if someone fights forever, do they not become brittle?
What am I saying? I'm really quite a mess, still unable to see things from the perspective of normalcy. Give it a few more years.*
Joshua shares. I try not to cry, and I succeed. Others around me do not. Robin is silently sobbing, Matthew sitting next to me is a mess. Tears all over his sleeves. He goes to the bathroom to clean up. He says Joshua's sharing wrecked him. I am simultaneously melted and apart. The time continues. Many share. I share. After, people thank folks for sharing. We give each other hugs. Robin gives good hugs.
Looking back, I feel like I shouldn't have been there, or maybe that's my insecurities slipping back in again. I wonder how I could have missed all this, and how to be there for people in the future. How should I know? How can I know? When we get back, the girls talk about loving a soft-boi, sad-boi hours, and how Joshua is so strong. I don't know what strong means, but it feels to me like calling someone a hero. It's so far away. Does it make someone a symbol?
And then there are the questions: Can one feel on behalf of another? How much? Can one make someone a hero without making them less of a man? How? How does one do so rightly, and if my ethic prohibits this, then what does it allow?
* Names have all been changed
** It's funny, coming back to this in September of 2023, I remember this incident, but only vaguely. Of course, the reason for the vagueness is because this incident was not attached to a strong friendship with or commitment to "Joshua." Affect without works is dead, and perhaps that is the answer to whether or not it was right to shed tears.
Returned to: 9/28/2023