You Know What Really Sucks?

You know what really sucks?

It sucks when you knew; you knew they were selfish. You knew they were unreliable. You knew they were dismissive of your feelings in favor of their own and you knew they weren't loyal and you knew they would do it again and you knew they were manipulative and you knew they'd always side against you and you knew they'd talk behind your back and you knew they were narcissistic and self obsessed.

And yet there you stood, handing them your heart like a damn idiot because relationships aren't free, you have to pay to play and you paid with all of you because YOU CARED.

Even if they didn't care about you, you cared about them and you hoped that would be enough. God and everyone else told you it wouldn't be... and they were right.

They were right and so were you.

Because you knew.

"Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection."

-Michael Yaconelli (Messy Spirituality)

AMEN!

i am not being needlessly alarmist when i say that popular feminism has become extremely radfem-esque and that the normalisation of negative stereotypes towards men needs to be resisted. like. i clearly remember when feminists were derided as "man-hating feminazis" and the main counter-argument to that went something like "we don't hate men, feminism is for everyone, patriarchy harms men too and our goal is to dismantle that oppressive system, this will benefit everyone including men, men can and should be feminists because feminism is a movement for gender equality"

in fact the major rebuttal to men forming "men's rights" movements was always that the issues these groups identified were the negative impacts of the patriarchy on men. they didn't need a separate group because feminism was for everyone and feminist thought and theorising already accounted for the ways patriarchy harms men. which is true! many of the societal issues faced by men stem from white supremacist patriarchy and restrictive gender roles and traditionally feminism has given thought and time to those issues. feminism is for everyone and it is concerned with men's struggles under patriarchy alongside women's.

but somewhere in the last few decades that attitude fell by the wayside and now popular online feminism is this radfem-flavored "all men are bad forever" thing. now mocking, belittling, or hating men is #feminist #praxis. it's feminist to make jokes about #killallmen. it's feminist to view masculinity as inherently bad and dangerous. it's feminist to talk about the men in your life like they're animals who need to be house trained, or emotionally stunted children who need to be babied and distracted.

it's this idea of flipping patriarchy on its head and saying that actually women are the Superior Gender, women deserve to run the world and make all the decisions, and actually it's men who are the Inferior Gender who can't be trusted or left unsupervised.

these attitudes will always have the most severe negative impact on marginalised men. i don't know how we got here but it's past time we circled back around to "feminism is for everyone".

Forgiveness is not something that the person who wronged you has to earn; it is freely given. However, trust is something that must be earned, deserved, fought for and maintained.

When you trust someone you love, you hand them your heart. In betrayal, they break it. Forgiveness allows you to take what is yours back and liberates you to move on. But by giving them your trust back, you're handing them your heart all over agan; something they have proven to be irresponsible with.

At my core, I am a loving and compassionate person who wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for the people that I love. I feel this is one of my best qualities. That being said, God has been teaching me recently that the respect and care and consideration I give to those around me may not always be returned. Others may not care about me in the way I care about them. When I decide to put forth effort with someone, I give them everything; I give them my whole heart because I want them to feel the depth of my love for them.

I am learning that not everyone is deserving of all of me. In light of this new understanding, I will continue to embrace forgiveness and I will continue to be loving towards others, but I am no longer handing out my heart like it is nothing of value.

I am so tired of chasing and embracing people that would not and have not done the same for me. I am tired of not respecting myself enough to protect my heart. You want my love? You want my trust? Earn it.

The only thing better than reading poetry is hearing the poet read it the way it was intended to be read