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922 results for “numb_comfortably”
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https://www.lovenba.com/1695088/ The Kings Are Making Me Numb #nba #sacramentokings #Basketball #BeamTeam #DarioSaric #DemarDeRozan #DennisSchroder #DevinBooker #DevinCarter #DomantasSabonis #DougChristie #DougMcDermott #DrewEubanks #DylanCardwell #IsaiahStevens #KeeganMurray #KeonEllis #LightTheBeam #MalikMonk #MaximeRaynaud #NBA #NiqueClifford #PacificDivision #PhoenixSuns #Podcast #PostgameReaction #PreciousAchuiwa #Recap #RUSSELLWESTBROOK #SacramentoKings #WesternConference #ZachLaVine
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♬ Numb II: https://suno.com/song/abb9a4fd-d71a-4872-8e5d-19105b35ffee #Sorrow #Sadcore #Ethreal #Grandiose #Female #Depress #Alternative #Piano #Whisper 🆙 #game #changer SUNO P #AI #related and #new #style of #UTAU #vocaloid #ボーカロイド #music #音楽 #udio #kaiber #producer #business #industry #entertainment 🌎 #global #community #news New Idols, Stars and Character(s) for us to love ❤️ ❧
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♬ Numb II: https://suno.com/song/abb9a4fd-d71a-4872-8e5d-19105b35ffee #Sorrow #Sadcore #Ethreal #Grandiose #Female #Depress #Alternative #Piano #Whisper 🆙 #game #changer SUNO P #AI #related and #new #style of #UTAU #vocaloid #ボーカロイド #music #音楽 #udio #kaiber #producer #business #industry #entertainment 🌎 #global #community #news New Idols, Stars and Character(s) for us to love ❤️ ❧
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♬ Numb II: https://suno.com/song/abb9a4fd-d71a-4872-8e5d-19105b35ffee #Sorrow #Sadcore #Ethreal #Grandiose #Female #Depress #Alternative #Piano #Whisper 🆙 #game #changer SUNO P #AI #related and #new #style of #UTAU #vocaloid #ボーカロイド #music #音楽 #udio #kaiber #producer #business #industry #entertainment 🌎 #global #community #news New Idols, Stars and Character(s) for us to love ❤️ ❧
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♬ Numb II: https://suno.com/song/abb9a4fd-d71a-4872-8e5d-19105b35ffee #Sorrow #Sadcore #Ethreal #Grandiose #Female #Depress #Alternative #Piano #Whisper 🆙 #game #changer SUNO P #AI #related and #new #style of #UTAU #vocaloid #ボーカロイド #music #音楽 #udio #kaiber #producer #business #industry #entertainment 🌎 #global #community #news New Idols, Stars and Character(s) for us to love ❤️ ❧
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Every#night I see you in my #dreams
I #wish you're here in#bed
I want to #feel your #body next to #me
But I'm #numb right #nowMy #solitude can't seem to #fade away
Your #love #haunts me until #now
My #mind can't seem to #forget #you
That smile and laughterFeels like It was yesterday
I drove my car to search for you,
I saw you with someone else
Realizing the pain strikes me hard like concrete…https://allpoetry.com/poem/16048514-Restless-Dreams-by-Hiroshi-Masters
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‘Numb to injustice’: House Democrat explains why the Laken Riley Act sailed through
#StopLakenRileyAct #BlameTheDNC #NeoliberalSurrenderMonkies #VoteProgressive #SaveDemocracy #StopNeoliberalism #WorkingClassNotDonorClass #AOC2028
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Idea for #comaps #organicmaps #osm #openstreetmap :
Make a new tag that people can add to bus stops for faster / shorter route change, seeing such tags navigation in software can give'em bigger priority than inner build-in one
Why? Because today I build my way from one city to another on 2 buses (numb. 321 & 654), spend no needed 5-6 bus stops, cross walk side and realized I could change bus way long before that place (4-5 bus stops before)
Hope my though is clear :blobcatcoffee:
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Idea for #comaps #organicmaps #osm #openstreetmap :
Make a new tag that people can add to bus stops for faster / shorter route change, seeing such tags navigation in software can give'em bigger priority than inner build-in one
Why? Because today I build my way from one city to another on 2 buses (numb. 321 & 654), spend no needed 5-6 bus stops, cross walk side and realized I could change bus way long before that place (4-5 bus stops before)
Hope my though is clear :blobcatcoffee:
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Idea for #comaps #organicmaps #osm #openstreetmap :
Make a new tag that people can add to bus stops for faster / shorter route change, seeing such tags navigation in software can give'em bigger priority than inner build-in one
Why? Because today I build my way from one city to another on 2 buses (numb. 321 & 654), spend no needed 5-6 bus stops, cross walk side and realized I could change bus way long before that place (4-5 bus stops before)
Hope my though is clear :blobcatcoffee:
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Idea for #comaps #organicmaps #osm #openstreetmap :
Make a new tag that people can add to bus stops for faster / shorter route change, seeing such tags navigation in software can give'em bigger priority than inner build-in one
Why? Because today I build my way from one city to another on 2 buses (numb. 321 & 654), spend no needed 5-6 bus stops, cross walk side and realized I could change bus way long before that place (4-5 bus stops before)
Hope my though is clear :blobcatcoffee:
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Idea for #comaps #organicmaps #osm #openstreetmap :
Make a new tag that people can add to bus stops for faster / shorter route change, seeing such tags navigation in software can give'em bigger priority than inner build-in one
Why? Because today I build my way from one city to another on 2 buses (numb. 321 & 654), spend no needed 5-6 bus stops, cross walk side and realized I could change bus way long before that place (4-5 bus stops before)
Hope my though is clear :blobcatcoffee:
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"Since retaking office, #Trump net worth has nearly tripled to $6.5B. Almost all of that has come from his #crypto #ventures an industry he's #deregulated at our collective #risk to line his own pockets. We must not become numb 2 his #corruption. Chart Shows How Trump 2.0 Is ‘Most Brazenly Self-Enriching’ Administration in US History
Buying Trump’s #meme #coin is like investing in “a pet rock, except you don’t even get a rock” out of the deal - #economist Steve Rattner. https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-self-enrichment-crypto -
New Dälek album, "Brilliance of a Falling Moon" is out now!
Also, a lyric visualizer for "Normalized Tragedy"!
Featuring lines like..."If I'm a piece of shit, then you a Henry Kissinger"
"Established fallacies, alternate realities. You a non-factor, it's just a formality. I, for one, never numb to brutality. So impressed how they've normalized tragedy"
GET THE ALBUM:
https://dalek.bandcamp.com/album/brilliance-of-a-falling-moon -
What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 130
Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching. Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?
I recommend you check out the following videos I found.
#1 2002 Resident Evil Movie Revisited – Almost a quarter-century ago, the first-ever live-action Resident Evil movie was released in cinemas directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich. Believe it or not, the 2002 movie was realized after the original film project involving zombie movie legend George Romero – who even directed the Japanese market TV commercial of Resident Evil 2/Bio Hazard 2 – got scrapped. Having played many RE games, I saw the movie in the local cinema upon release and went home feeling numb and alienated. Even though the film was never an adaptation of the games (note: no RE character from the games appeared in the movie) and it had its own concepts, there are still some people who enjoyed it or endured the moments of suspense and horror. To learn how it impacts viewers, watch the reaction videos below.
https://youtu.be/p9WYMRjk6n4?si=DsFnOBe5ZnsACgIW
https://youtu.be/-ehGVoM83yQ?si=yoW01S4xNIhFW07K
https://youtu.be/OJURXK9tHD4?si=KSyFq3h9yk8nypgC
https://youtu.be/f3EygyBSW08?si=gSbEmQyDKnH1R4XK
#2 Ranting For Vengeance Slams Spider-Man: Brand New Day And The Modern Culture Behind It –The first trailer of the upcoming movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day drew a lot views from around the world but YouTuber Ranting For Vengeance was not fooled by it. In his recent video, he slammed the new movie and explained in detail the woke elements or so-called modern culture behind it. He also stressed that the real good stories of Spider-Man are in the comic books from long ago and the only good Spider-Man films are those directed by Sam Raimi. To learn more, watch Ranting for Vengeance’s video below.
https://youtu.be/ICJ4k2h9V34?si=JSf6nsA_w3sdD6LJ
#3 The Negative Effects Of Sports Betting Exposed – As technology evolved, making bets on sports events – right down to specific achievements or action – has gotten more convenient to do and has turned normal in society. However, there are indeed negative effects and regrets that come with it. Watch and learn from the 700 Club video below.
https://youtu.be/-BjbfETXX4E?si=OVOS5rClmUM3BvW6
#4 Remember America’s Lunch Counters? – Decades ago in the United States, lunch counters were popular as they provided customers not only a place to enjoy their meals but also become a part of a “counter community” where they interact with the cook (or assistant) on the other side, and chat with fellow customers on the side. Lunch counters have disappeared in most parts of America and there are some young people who never knew they existed. Here is a nostalgic look back at America’s lunch counters.
https://youtu.be/Z7LFaguOHD4?si=gQNjUWhxtdYIIZTP
#5 Cancelled Creatures Of Resident Evil Games – The Resident Evil games franchise turned 30 this year. Not only did Capcom release a lot of RE video games through the decades and had several characters which resonated with gamers, a lot of monsters/creatures were also featured on top of the zombie hordes. Like movies or TV shows, the RE video games had content that never made it in versions that were commercially released and among them are many creatures or monsters that were either conceptualized or even produced. To find out what those cancelled creatures are, watch ScorePN’s number below.
https://youtu.be/ud2avlQp31E?si=Mu7mVGiPYgYWlCzF
#6 Customers Attracted By Kappabashi Kitchen Town – Have you heard of Kappabashi Kitchen Town? It’s a place in Tokyo, Japan, which has been attracting different types of customers as it has a nice variety of products for sale. There are locals who need something for their cooking needs or for their business operations. Unsurprisingly, foreigners are also attracted to the place. To find out more about Kappabashi Kitchen Town, watch the Nippon TV video below.
https://youtu.be/cAwJ7c91a4o?si=QV0mA-JYQttkYZ2m
#7 Starman Retrospective – I saw the 1984 science fiction film Starman a number of times through the decades. Directed by John Carpenter and starring Jeff Bridges, Starman is about an unlikely relationship between a recently widowed woman and an alien being who cloned the human body of her later husband. Starman is a fine film and its production history is also fascinating to explore. To find out more about Starman, watch the videos below from Represent This.
https://youtu.be/7aRW0DZL08E?si=ge_MVh1Vc8ylDWCh
https://youtu.be/7RVyYLzoAnM?si=r9ySolL1qsLpllAm
https://youtu.be/RM4i6c7irNw?si=7q-avN_awfHizIAn
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Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @HavenorFantasy as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
#1990s #adventure #America #amusement #arcade #arcadeGames #arcadeGaming #Asia #bakla #Blog #blogger #blogging #Capcom #CarloCarrasco #CBNNews #ChatGPT #ChristianBroadcastingNetworkCBN #cinema #consoleGames #cooking #DeckerShado #Democrats #diner #entertainment #entertainmentBlog #EOMReacts #Facebook #film #food #foodBlog #foodJoint #foodie #foreignTourists #fun #gambling #gamers #gaming #gay #geek #GeorgeARomero #GeorgeRomero #Google #GoogleSearch #GordonRobertson #Hollywood #homosexual #homosexuality #Inclusion #Instagram #Islamist #IslamoLeft #Japan #Japanese #JapaneseFood #JapaneseRolePlayingGameJRPG #JeffBridges #JohnCarpenter #JRPG #JRPGs #KappabashiKitchenTown #leftists #LGBT #LGBTQ #lunchCounters #MarvelCinematicUniverseMCU #MillaJovovich #movies #mustSee #mustWatch #Nippon #NipponTV #nostalgia #onlineVideos #PaulWSAnderson #PlayStation #politicalCorrectness #PS1 #PSOne #RaccoonCity #RantingForVengeance #RepresentThis #ResidentEvil #ResidentEvil1996 #ResidentEvil2002 #restaurant #RetroGaming #Retrospective #rolePlayingGameRPG #rolePlayingGamesRPGs #SatanicLeft #sciFi #scienceFiction #ScorePN #socialMedia #SpiderManBrandNewDay #sports #sportsBetting #sportsGambling #Starman #The1990s #Tokyo #TomHolland #tourism #tourismBlog #touristSpots #tourists #travel #travelBlog #travelers #Tumblr #Twitter #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmericaUSA #USA #vacation #video #videoBlog #videoGames #videos #WhatToWatchOnYouTube #woke #WordPress #WordPressCom #YouTube #YouTuber #YouTubers #zombie #zombieApocalypse #zombies -
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Time to share this again because my life’s time is running out, I may have a year or two left but could just as well drop any day. Therefore I need to spread this far and wide, as I am a victim of this #barbaric #malpractice of #circumcision, of male #genital_mutilation.
I was circumcised shortly before my 6th birthday – I FKN REMEMBER HOW MUCH MORE SENSITIVE I WAS “DOWN THERE” before they did it to me, what extremely joyous, “electric”, feelings I had when I touched my glans and played with my foreskin, feelings that ran through my whole body from there.
In my twenties already there was NOTHING of that sensitivity anymore, you could press a #toothbrush against my glans and I’d not even know what was happening there unless I’d LOOK, I am so numb there that I only have very vague feeling of pressure there, and temperature, but nothing erogenous, no joyous feelings anymore.
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CW: Musings over ADHD med combo; briefly mentions RSD, disgust reflex, and suspected ARFID
NGL, it's honestly kinda funny to us that there was such resistance to the very concept of us taking a combination of meds to help us with our ADHD (tecnically AuDHD) struggles, given that the meds don't have any known negative interactions and actually cancel out some of the negatives of each other 😅
e.g.,
Lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse®)
- Insomnia or disturbed sleep
- Increased blood pressure
- Increased pulse
Guanfacine (Intuniv®)
- Drowsiness
- Decreased blood pressure
- Decreased pulse
We're up to 4 mg of guanfacine nightly now (as of Monday), alongside 60 mg lisdex (split across 2 x 30 mg doses, taken ~2 hours apart) daily.
Aside from some minor titration issues whilst our body has been getting used to the introduction of guanfacine, we've found it is beginning to help with sleep and has noticeably helped lower our blood pressure and pulse.
It's also having the pleasant effects of reducing baseline anxiety, which is a key component of our Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), and lowering our disgust reflex, which became more prominent during the summer and which we think is a major factor in the increasing ARFID-like symptoms we experienced (and are still trying to recover from).
Unlike with SSRIs or SNRIs, it doesn't make us feel numb or unable to feel sad. That makes sense, as it's basically selectively blocking some alpha-2A adrenergic receptors, which in turn is decreasing activity within our sympathetic nervous system.
If we continue to do well at 4 mg, we'll probably ask to remain there, rather than trial going higher, as 4 mg seems to be the sweet spot for a lot of folks, and is the max dose of a single pill. We could in theory try up to 7 mg, but we're not in a rush there.
#guanfacine #lisdexamfetamine #ADHD #AuDHD #anxiety #RSD #ARFID #SideEffects #neurodivergent #neurospicy
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CW: Bowie's Blackstar at 10 - A Fedi-sourced celebration of a masterpiece [CW'd for length]
Bowie’s ★ at 10
Our next spotlight is on number 299 on The List, submitted by HillardHouseDan. And because this is a big anniversary for an even bigger album, some Fedi friends[1] will be joining me today to collectively share our thoughts on its impact, and our memories of its release. For, on January 8, 2016 – David Bowie’s 69th birthday – Bowie released his 26th studio album, making today the 10th anniversary of the experimental jazz/rock masterpiece ★ aka Blackstar.
rothko: “TENTH?!”
daria: “…10 years???? HOW 😭“
blogdiva: “Shit. It’s already been 10 years?!?!?”
austinross: “Hard to believe it’s already been 10 years.”
peach: “As the general quality of modern music has decayed, one of the last great albums has reached a decade.”
And, as we all know, 2 days later, January 10, 2016, Bowie left us, succumbing to a cancer we didn’t know he had been fighting, making Blackstar – whether intentionally crafted to be or not – his swan song.
harriolkn: “I remember reading the news when I was at work and barely kept it together for the rest of the day. When I finally got home, and saw my partner at the time, we both just burst into tears and embraced each other without saying a word.”
buffyleigh: “When KEXP celebrated the release of ★ with ‘Intergalactic Bowie Day’ [on Friday, January 8, 2016], I instantly fell in love with the album, the first entire Bowie album I had listened to from beginning to end…I listened to the entire 12-hour tribute and planned on working my way through his discography, starting with picking up ★ on vinyl as soon as I could get down to my local record store, seeing as it felt wrong listening to the full album on YouTube, which someone had already posted. When I saw the news on Monday morning, I was stunned and disoriented…called in sick and went to my local record store to stand there and be sad with everyone else.”
The summer of 2014 was both when Bowie first received his diagnosis and when he began demoing songs that would appear on Blackstar and in his musical Lazarus. During the 2015 recording sessions, the cancer was treated, went into remission, and – in November, around the making of the music video for “Lazarus” – returned with a status of terminal. And so, though Bowie had continued writing and recording, planning both a follow-up to Blackstar and another musical, he was facing his mortality head-on the entire time he was creating this album, living with the knowledge that this could very well be the last album he made, that it could be the last statement from an artist known for making a statement with everything he did.
Given this context and the fact that many heard the album for the first time literally just before or just after hearing the news, it’s essentially impossible for the listener to separate their experience and interpretation of Blackstar from Bowie’s death. Even without over-analyzing it all, it’s easy to notice that the album’s lyrics are full of references to death and dying, and that its atmosphere is melancholic and existential at the very least, if not downright foreboding. And the brilliant music videos for the singles “Blackstar” (single and video released November 19, 2015) and “Lazarus” (single released December 17, 2015; video released January 7, 2016)? Well, they’re both chock-full of more symbolism and self-referential imagery a Bowie fanatic could shake a stick at, simply encouraging – nay, inviting – the viewer to read absolutely anything and everything into them.
billyjoebowers: “When the ‘Blackstar’ video came out I remember talking with a friend about how interesting but weird it was, and being kind of amused and confused by it. Then he died, and the ‘Lazarus’ video, and it was like ‘Oh shit!’. Like a punch in the gut. An amazing work, I listened to it non-stop for months, but not for several months after, it was too raw.”
Anomnomnomaly: “To me, the album felt like he was writing his obituary in a lot of the lyrics. So when he passed away shortly after, the whole album started to make a lot more sense for me.”
BackFromTheDud: “@Anomnomnomaly Agree. He knew the end was near, and it shows.”
But, even if our experience of the album is coloured by this context, that by no means takes away from the brilliance of this album.
If we had been fortunate enough to get another Bowie album or two or six after it, Blackstar would remain an absolute standout in his eclectic discography. It was unlike anything Bowie had ever done. Even just Bowie’s decision to not have any familiar faces in the backing band but rather to hire a pre-existing group (i.e., Donny McCaslin’s quartet with Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre, and Mark Guiliana) – and a jazz quartet at that! – was a stunning move. That move alone, particularly given what must have been a strong sense of urgency to realize the music Bowie still wanted to get out before it was too late, could’ve made them all rush, cut corners, make compromises. But, instead, the gamble of working with musicians who were new to Bowie’s processes and methods – musicians from a corner of the music world that Bowie had not yet visited – paid off in spades. The result was that the album showcased once again Bowie’s awe-inducing drive to always push himself further and further, even when just shy of 70 years old – never afraid to try something new, never calling it in, and never wanting to rest on his long-before well-earned laurels, all for the love of music, art, and artistry.
Its context simply drew deserved attention to Blackstar much sooner than it might’ve in other circumstances, immediately cementing its status as a masterpiece rather than it taking people a beat or two to grasp what this genius had just dropped into our laps. Indeed, its context ultimately made David Bowie-the-performer the most human he had ever been, in some ways making this album – an otherwise rather experimental if not challenging musical work – perhaps the easiest in his entire oeuvre for people to instantly connect with, in one way or another.
AnxietyDescending: “Released at the same time of Bowie’s passing, Blackstar was a bittersweet release. At first listen it was obviously a masterpiece but that joy was tempered by the fact that it would be Bowie’s last.”
mathzy: “It was going to be one of his masterpieces anyway. And then it was released virtually on the date of his death. My reaction was this was a legend and he put all his legendary artistic endeavour into it. Gorgeous, dark, brooding, triumphant.”
soulforgotten: “Blackstar was a really hard one for me to listen to. Bowie passed away before I got the chance to listen to the album and his death was especially crushing for me and my wife. As much as I wanted to take the album for a spin, I just couldn’t at the time. It was years later that I finally took the opportunity to listen to it, and it was an almost 50/50 split of regret (leaving so long to hear it) and admiration for his final album. It is a solid bookend to an amazing legacy.”
okohll: “Bowie at his best, I’m really glad he managed to pull off a master-work to bow out with. Evokes something strange, extra-worldly, profound yet at the same time can’t escape the Bowie-like elements of fun. He had the gift of being able to make something both unique and banging. Mention must be made of the collection of musicians he pulled together – the drumming is absolutely amazing for example. The success is that the whole is even greater than the sum of the parts.”
serpicojam: “I had been a fan of Mark Giuliana’s (and the rest of the folks on the LP who’d worked with Donny McCaslin) long before Blackstar was released, and I really appreciated his influence on the songs. ‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’ is so dark, but it’s such a masterpiece. I should probably revisit the whole album again.”
evilchili: “Blackstar is astonishing in its ambition: here is a record that is both polemic and meditation, defiantly rejecting endings while saying goodbye, a grand finale and also the start of a new creative direction we will never get to follow. Throughout his career Bowie never told us everything, but he would give us glimpses, and Blackstar is no different: deeply personal, but only to a point. It’s true, but it’s an ambiguous truth. It’s wry and winking and earnest all at once. And full of swagger! It’s a considered, intentional final work by a dying man who is not afraid to remind us precisely how good he is.
‘You’re a flash in the pan
I am the great I AM'”No matter the whys and wherefores, upon its release 10 years ago, Blackstar became an important album for many of us, whether it changed how we approached the rest of Bowie’s discography, how we approached or viewed modern music in general, even how we played our own music.
NoRestfortheWicked: “Personally, it opened for me more of the David Bowie albums like Low. Also I like the aesthetic of this album and videos. ‘Blackstar’ like a sci-fi film, ‘Lazarus’ has an almost prophetic feeling of a dying man on his bed. For me, it was something new to find, and it expanded my musical taste a lot.”
RobeeShepherd: “I know some huge Bowie fans, so I’ve been exposed to his work, but for me whilst I love his earlier stuff he felt irrelevant to me as a music fan after ‘Absolute Beginners’. I’ve dipped in a little since then and nothing grabbed me, until Blackstar. That didn’t pull me in, it sucked me in and I played it on repeat for months.”
buffyleigh: “I became a fan THE DAY Blackstar came out, listened to Bowie all that Friday and weekend. And then Monday happened. So I was a fan of all of 3 entire days and yet it totally knocked the wind out of me. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that changed how I approach music. I listened to ONLY Bowie for months after that, only broken by Prince dying and then I only listened to Bowie and Prince for another few months. I never did deep dives before that, or re-evaluated my feeling on artists I had written off long before. And now that’s what takes up most of my listening time.”
billyjoebowers: “I worked with a band and thought I heard something with the drummer. ‘Have you listened to Blackstar?’ He laughed and said ‘Yeah, non stop’. I could hear it in the change in his playing.”
And, for some, it remains an album that still profoundly affects us in one way or another, even when it’s not playing. It’s approached reverentially, not just as a memorial for its artist but perhaps of something larger that we’ve all lost.
daria: “I can’t remember when I heard it last time, it’s an emotionally difficult album for me.”
avi_miller: “Blackstar is an album like no other. It will forever be tinged with emotions for me from Bowie’s passing, and I don’t think that is a bad thing. Sometimes I put it on and cry a little.”
harriolkn: “Blackstar is probably my favourite Bowie album but I can’t listen to it very often because it makes me feel more sad than any other music.”
buffyleigh: “I will never get over this album, and feel like every single note of it is totally ingrained in my brain. I literally have never listened to this without crying…is perhaps the first/only record in my collection I would consider sacred (in a non-religious sense). It’s also my least listened to favourite album because I never want it to become background music, and each listen is almost a rite. I essentially only put it on for Bowiemas/Bowienalia.”
austinross: “It is a life-changing album.”
theotherbrook: “I wish I could come up with something meaningful to say, but when I think about that album the nerves are still too raw for me to touch. I know I’m not alone in having an irrational sense that our collective orbit entered a state of rapid decay with Bowie’s death. It is — it must be — coincidental. But still. Leaving us Blackstar wasn’t just writing his own epitaph, but also leaving us a marker for that moment when we could no longer ignore how unstable the trajectory we were on had become. I don’t know… I meant to say I have nothing to say but then I said that.”
At the very least, whether Blackstar is among your favourite Bowie albums (or favourite albums, period) or not, for 40+ years the release of a new Bowie album was a cultural event, and this album was certainly among the biggest of them all if not THE biggest. In the age of the Internet (and so, Bowie’s last five albums, starting with the 1999 release ‘hours…’), such events have brought together people from literally all over the world, from all walks of life, to share in a piece of sonic art that brought beauty, comfort, wonder, and escape. Given the times we live in, where connection is perhaps more important than ever, that this was the last Bowie event we could ever share in, could bond over, could disappear into, is in itself something to be remembered and mourned.
satsuma: “Back in the day, Twitter used to be a friendly place where you could connect with a group of friends to chat about anything that took your fancy. You would accumulate loose networks of common interests with people across the internet, and occasionally closer bonds would form. One such group consisted of people who had realised that if we picked an album and all hit play at the agreed time, then that meant we could share our experiences of listening to music together, even though we might be worlds apart. We started with the odd album at lunchtime, then came up with some rules to add to our choices – the idea was to pick 5 albums by the same artist (their first, their last, the fans choice, the controversial choice and the wild card) and I coined the hashtag ‘5×1’ (for five by one) as a way of tying everything together. The comedian Michael Legge then suggested listening to every album by a particular group or artist at the rate of one a day, so we went through the discographies of Sparks, Gary Numan, Queen and eventually David Bowie, with the tag ‘BowieADay’ starting with ‘David Bowie’ and ending with ‘The Next Day’, the final album at the time.
We all loved Bowie, and so when we heard rumours that a new album was coming out we made plans to stay up after midnight to listen to it as soon as it was released. We laughed, we made jokes, we appreciated the joy of hearing something new and important from our Hero for the first time – it felt like a message from him straight to us and we all knew that we would be puzzling over the lyrics for a long time to come. What was with all of the references to him dying? What was a Blackstar anyway?
We went to bed happy that night, and then woke up two days later to the awful news that David Bowie was gone. We were numb with grief and clung together virtually to process how we felt.
I couldn’t face listening to Blackstar again for a long time – it was simply too painful to think that he knew he was dying as he wrote it. It took almost a year before we undertook another ‘BowieADay’ journey, knowing that this one had a final ending point.
The second time around was more poignant than the first, and I saw more of the connections that had always been there right from the very beginning to the bitter end. Of course there were Low points on the way and the second hearing of Blackstar was both agonising and cathartic, and the beginning of appreciating how much we lost on the day he died.
Of course, I’ve listened to Blackstar again in the ten years since then, but every time has felt like an occasion. It’s not an album to be streamed at random or added to playlists. It demands attention and ritual. To be listened to on the best speakers, with the lights dimmed and with full attention.
Our original ‘5×1’ group is now dispersed across different platforms, only sometimes reconnecting, but it’s not quite the same now. I have new friends in different places, but we still have common bonds in a love of music, and especially with this album that still holds a special place in my heart.
Rest in peace, Starman.”
If you haven’t yet heard this album, it’s waiting for you, whenever you’re ready. And, if you haven’t yet listened to Bowie’s full discography and aren’t sure where to start, perhaps check out our continuation of satsuma’s BowieADay that a few of us did last year, complete with a suggested schedule for what to listen to from January 8 through to the end of the month, including all the studio albums and some extras. I, for one, will be hiding in my Bowie playlist for the remainder of the month.
Thank you, Bowie.
- Mastodon/Fediverse usernames shown alongside their quotes. Nearly each participant submitted a single blurb, so some quotes have been split up to fit sections, and some have been very lightly edited for spelling/punctuation/capitalization. Many thanks again to the 20 Fedizens who took part (in alphabetical order): Anomnomnomaly, AnxietyDescending, austinross, avi_miller, BackFromTheDud, billyjoebowers, blogdiva, daria, evilchili, harriolkn, mathzy, NoRestfortheWicked, okohll, peach, RobeeShepherd, rothko, satsuma, serpicojam, soulforgotten, and theotherbrook. (For those with keen eyes but who may not know who is behind the keyboard, I don’t thank buffyleigh simply because that is me. And I know quoting myself is a bit hokey, but I am quoting what I’ve written elsewhere.) ↩︎
#Bowie #DavidBowie #DonnyMcCaslin #experimental #JasonLindner #jazz #ListenToThis #MarkGuiliana #music #musicDiscovery #rock #TimLefebvre
-
CW: Bowie's Blackstar at 10 - A Fedi-sourced celebration of a masterpiece [CW'd for length]
Bowie’s ★ at 10
Our next spotlight is on number 299 on The List, submitted by HillardHouseDan. And because this is a big anniversary for an even bigger album, some Fedi friends[1] will be joining me today to collectively share our thoughts on its impact, and our memories of its release. For, on January 8, 2016 – David Bowie’s 69th birthday – Bowie released his 26th studio album, making today the 10th anniversary of the experimental jazz/rock masterpiece ★ aka Blackstar.
rothko: “TENTH?!”
daria: “…10 years???? HOW 😭“
blogdiva: “Shit. It’s already been 10 years?!?!?”
austinross: “Hard to believe it’s already been 10 years.”
peach: “As the general quality of modern music has decayed, one of the last great albums has reached a decade.”
And, as we all know, 2 days later, January 10, 2016, Bowie left us, succumbing to a cancer we didn’t know he had been fighting, making Blackstar – whether intentionally crafted to be or not – his swan song.
harriolkn: “I remember reading the news when I was at work and barely kept it together for the rest of the day. When I finally got home, and saw my partner at the time, we both just burst into tears and embraced each other without saying a word.”
buffyleigh: “When KEXP celebrated the release of ★ with ‘Intergalactic Bowie Day’ [on Friday, January 8, 2016], I instantly fell in love with the album, the first entire Bowie album I had listened to from beginning to end…I listened to the entire 12-hour tribute and planned on working my way through his discography, starting with picking up ★ on vinyl as soon as I could get down to my local record store, seeing as it felt wrong listening to the full album on YouTube, which someone had already posted. When I saw the news on Monday morning, I was stunned and disoriented…called in sick and went to my local record store to stand there and be sad with everyone else.”
The summer of 2014 was both when Bowie first received his diagnosis and when he began demoing songs that would appear on Blackstar and in his musical Lazarus. During the 2015 recording sessions, the cancer was treated, went into remission, and – in November, around the making of the music video for “Lazarus” – returned with a status of terminal. And so, though Bowie had continued writing and recording, planning both a follow-up to Blackstar and another musical, he was facing his mortality head-on the entire time he was creating this album, living with the knowledge that this could very well be the last album he made, that it could be the last statement from an artist known for making a statement with everything he did.
Given this context and the fact that many heard the album for the first time literally just before or just after hearing the news, it’s essentially impossible for the listener to separate their experience and interpretation of Blackstar from Bowie’s death. Even without over-analyzing it all, it’s easy to notice that the album’s lyrics are full of references to death and dying, and that its atmosphere is melancholic and existential at the very least, if not downright foreboding. And the brilliant music videos for the singles “Blackstar” (single and video released November 19, 2015) and “Lazarus” (single released December 17, 2015; video released January 7, 2016)? Well, they’re both chock-full of more symbolism and self-referential imagery a Bowie fanatic could shake a stick at, simply encouraging – nay, inviting – the viewer to read absolutely anything and everything into them.
billyjoebowers: “When the ‘Blackstar’ video came out I remember talking with a friend about how interesting but weird it was, and being kind of amused and confused by it. Then he died, and the ‘Lazarus’ video, and it was like ‘Oh shit!’. Like a punch in the gut. An amazing work, I listened to it non-stop for months, but not for several months after, it was too raw.”
Anomnomnomaly: “To me, the album felt like he was writing his obituary in a lot of the lyrics. So when he passed away shortly after, the whole album started to make a lot more sense for me.”
BackFromTheDud: “@Anomnomnomaly Agree. He knew the end was near, and it shows.”
But, even if our experience of the album is coloured by this context, that by no means takes away from the brilliance of this album.
If we had been fortunate enough to get another Bowie album or two or six after it, Blackstar would remain an absolute standout in his eclectic discography. It was unlike anything Bowie had ever done. Even just Bowie’s decision to not have any familiar faces in the backing band but rather to hire a pre-existing group (i.e., Donny McCaslin’s quartet with Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre, and Mark Guiliana) – and a jazz quartet at that! – was a stunning move. That move alone, particularly given what must have been a strong sense of urgency to realize the music Bowie still wanted to get out before it was too late, could’ve made them all rush, cut corners, make compromises. But, instead, the gamble of working with musicians who were new to Bowie’s processes and methods – musicians from a corner of the music world that Bowie had not yet visited – paid off in spades. The result was that the album showcased once again Bowie’s awe-inducing drive to always push himself further and further, even when just shy of 70 years old – never afraid to try something new, never calling it in, and never wanting to rest on his long-before well-earned laurels, all for the love of music, art, and artistry.
Its context simply drew deserved attention to Blackstar much sooner than it might’ve in other circumstances, immediately cementing its status as a masterpiece rather than it taking people a beat or two to grasp what this genius had just dropped into our laps. Indeed, its context ultimately made David Bowie-the-performer the most human he had ever been, in some ways making this album – an otherwise rather experimental if not challenging musical work – perhaps the easiest in his entire oeuvre for people to instantly connect with, in one way or another.
AnxietyDescending: “Released at the same time of Bowie’s passing, Blackstar was a bittersweet release. At first listen it was obviously a masterpiece but that joy was tempered by the fact that it would be Bowie’s last.”
mathzy: “It was going to be one of his masterpieces anyway. And then it was released virtually on the date of his death. My reaction was this was a legend and he put all his legendary artistic endeavour into it. Gorgeous, dark, brooding, triumphant.”
soulforgotten: “Blackstar was a really hard one for me to listen to. Bowie passed away before I got the chance to listen to the album and his death was especially crushing for me and my wife. As much as I wanted to take the album for a spin, I just couldn’t at the time. It was years later that I finally took the opportunity to listen to it, and it was an almost 50/50 split of regret (leaving so long to hear it) and admiration for his final album. It is a solid bookend to an amazing legacy.”
okohll: “Bowie at his best, I’m really glad he managed to pull off a master-work to bow out with. Evokes something strange, extra-worldly, profound yet at the same time can’t escape the Bowie-like elements of fun. He had the gift of being able to make something both unique and banging. Mention must be made of the collection of musicians he pulled together – the drumming is absolutely amazing for example. The success is that the whole is even greater than the sum of the parts.”
serpicojam: “I had been a fan of Mark Giuliana’s (and the rest of the folks on the LP who’d worked with Donny McCaslin) long before Blackstar was released, and I really appreciated his influence on the songs. ‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’ is so dark, but it’s such a masterpiece. I should probably revisit the whole album again.”
evilchili: “Blackstar is astonishing in its ambition: here is a record that is both polemic and meditation, defiantly rejecting endings while saying goodbye, a grand finale and also the start of a new creative direction we will never get to follow. Throughout his career Bowie never told us everything, but he would give us glimpses, and Blackstar is no different: deeply personal, but only to a point. It’s true, but it’s an ambiguous truth. It’s wry and winking and earnest all at once. And full of swagger! It’s a considered, intentional final work by a dying man who is not afraid to remind us precisely how good he is.
‘You’re a flash in the pan
I am the great I AM'”No matter the whys and wherefores, upon its release 10 years ago, Blackstar became an important album for many of us, whether it changed how we approached the rest of Bowie’s discography, how we approached or viewed modern music in general, even how we played our own music.
NoRestfortheWicked: “Personally, it opened for me more of the David Bowie albums like Low. Also I like the aesthetic of this album and videos. ‘Blackstar’ like a sci-fi film, ‘Lazarus’ has an almost prophetic feeling of a dying man on his bed. For me, it was something new to find, and it expanded my musical taste a lot.”
RobeeShepherd: “I know some huge Bowie fans, so I’ve been exposed to his work, but for me whilst I love his earlier stuff he felt irrelevant to me as a music fan after ‘Absolute Beginners’. I’ve dipped in a little since then and nothing grabbed me, until Blackstar. That didn’t pull me in, it sucked me in and I played it on repeat for months.”
buffyleigh: “I became a fan THE DAY Blackstar came out, listened to Bowie all that Friday and weekend. And then Monday happened. So I was a fan of all of 3 entire days and yet it totally knocked the wind out of me. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that changed how I approach music. I listened to ONLY Bowie for months after that, only broken by Prince dying and then I only listened to Bowie and Prince for another few months. I never did deep dives before that, or re-evaluated my feeling on artists I had written off long before. And now that’s what takes up most of my listening time.”
billyjoebowers: “I worked with a band and thought I heard something with the drummer. ‘Have you listened to Blackstar?’ He laughed and said ‘Yeah, non stop’. I could hear it in the change in his playing.”
And, for some, it remains an album that still profoundly affects us in one way or another, even when it’s not playing. It’s approached reverentially, not just as a memorial for its artist but perhaps of something larger that we’ve all lost.
daria: “I can’t remember when I heard it last time, it’s an emotionally difficult album for me.”
avi_miller: “Blackstar is an album like no other. It will forever be tinged with emotions for me from Bowie’s passing, and I don’t think that is a bad thing. Sometimes I put it on and cry a little.”
harriolkn: “Blackstar is probably my favourite Bowie album but I can’t listen to it very often because it makes me feel more sad than any other music.”
buffyleigh: “I will never get over this album, and feel like every single note of it is totally ingrained in my brain. I literally have never listened to this without crying…is perhaps the first/only record in my collection I would consider sacred (in a non-religious sense). It’s also my least listened to favourite album because I never want it to become background music, and each listen is almost a rite. I essentially only put it on for Bowiemas/Bowienalia.”
austinross: “It is a life-changing album.”
theotherbrook: “I wish I could come up with something meaningful to say, but when I think about that album the nerves are still too raw for me to touch. I know I’m not alone in having an irrational sense that our collective orbit entered a state of rapid decay with Bowie’s death. It is — it must be — coincidental. But still. Leaving us Blackstar wasn’t just writing his own epitaph, but also leaving us a marker for that moment when we could no longer ignore how unstable the trajectory we were on had become. I don’t know… I meant to say I have nothing to say but then I said that.”
At the very least, whether Blackstar is among your favourite Bowie albums (or favourite albums, period) or not, for 40+ years the release of a new Bowie album was a cultural event, and this album was certainly among the biggest of them all if not THE biggest. In the age of the Internet (and so, Bowie’s last five albums, starting with the 1999 release ‘hours…’), such events have brought together people from literally all over the world, from all walks of life, to share in a piece of sonic art that brought beauty, comfort, wonder, and escape. Given the times we live in, where connection is perhaps more important than ever, that this was the last Bowie event we could ever share in, could bond over, could disappear into, is in itself something to be remembered and mourned.
satsuma: “Back in the day, Twitter used to be a friendly place where you could connect with a group of friends to chat about anything that took your fancy. You would accumulate loose networks of common interests with people across the internet, and occasionally closer bonds would form. One such group consisted of people who had realised that if we picked an album and all hit play at the agreed time, then that meant we could share our experiences of listening to music together, even though we might be worlds apart. We started with the odd album at lunchtime, then came up with some rules to add to our choices – the idea was to pick 5 albums by the same artist (their first, their last, the fans choice, the controversial choice and the wild card) and I coined the hashtag ‘5×1’ (for five by one) as a way of tying everything together. The comedian Michael Legge then suggested listening to every album by a particular group or artist at the rate of one a day, so we went through the discographies of Sparks, Gary Numan, Queen and eventually David Bowie, with the tag ‘BowieADay’ starting with ‘David Bowie’ and ending with ‘The Next Day’, the final album at the time.
We all loved Bowie, and so when we heard rumours that a new album was coming out we made plans to stay up after midnight to listen to it as soon as it was released. We laughed, we made jokes, we appreciated the joy of hearing something new and important from our Hero for the first time – it felt like a message from him straight to us and we all knew that we would be puzzling over the lyrics for a long time to come. What was with all of the references to him dying? What was a Blackstar anyway?
We went to bed happy that night, and then woke up two days later to the awful news that David Bowie was gone. We were numb with grief and clung together virtually to process how we felt.
I couldn’t face listening to Blackstar again for a long time – it was simply too painful to think that he knew he was dying as he wrote it. It took almost a year before we undertook another ‘BowieADay’ journey, knowing that this one had a final ending point.
The second time around was more poignant than the first, and I saw more of the connections that had always been there right from the very beginning to the bitter end. Of course there were Low points on the way and the second hearing of Blackstar was both agonising and cathartic, and the beginning of appreciating how much we lost on the day he died.
Of course, I’ve listened to Blackstar again in the ten years since then, but every time has felt like an occasion. It’s not an album to be streamed at random or added to playlists. It demands attention and ritual. To be listened to on the best speakers, with the lights dimmed and with full attention.
Our original ‘5×1’ group is now dispersed across different platforms, only sometimes reconnecting, but it’s not quite the same now. I have new friends in different places, but we still have common bonds in a love of music, and especially with this album that still holds a special place in my heart.
Rest in peace, Starman.”
If you haven’t yet heard this album, it’s waiting for you, whenever you’re ready. And, if you haven’t yet listened to Bowie’s full discography and aren’t sure where to start, perhaps check out our continuation of satsuma’s BowieADay that a few of us did last year, complete with a suggested schedule for what to listen to from January 8 through to the end of the month, including all the studio albums and some extras. I, for one, will be hiding in my Bowie playlist for the remainder of the month.
Thank you, Bowie.
- Mastodon/Fediverse usernames shown alongside their quotes. Nearly each participant submitted a single blurb, so some quotes have been split up to fit sections, and some have been very lightly edited for spelling/punctuation/capitalization. Many thanks again to the 20 Fedizens who took part (in alphabetical order): Anomnomnomaly, AnxietyDescending, austinross, avi_miller, BackFromTheDud, billyjoebowers, blogdiva, daria, evilchili, harriolkn, mathzy, NoRestfortheWicked, okohll, peach, RobeeShepherd, rothko, satsuma, serpicojam, soulforgotten, and theotherbrook. (For those with keen eyes but who may not know who is behind the keyboard, I don’t thank buffyleigh simply because that is me. And I know quoting myself is a bit hokey, but I am quoting what I’ve written elsewhere.) ↩︎
#Bowie #DavidBowie #DonnyMcCaslin #experimental #JasonLindner #jazz #ListenToThis #MarkGuiliana #music #musicDiscovery #rock #TimLefebvre
-
I quickly found out my hand said no to pruning shears and my arms said no to the loppers. They gave me no choice so I was forced to play with the chainsaw.
I now have a nice pile of logs and a mostly numb hand (vibrations and nerve damage don't mix).
-
I quickly found out my hand said no to pruning shears and my arms said no to the loppers. They gave me no choice so I was forced to play with the chainsaw.
I now have a nice pile of logs and a mostly numb hand (vibrations and nerve damage don't mix).
-
I quickly found out my hand said no to pruning shears and my arms said no to the loppers. They gave me no choice so I was forced to play with the chainsaw.
I now have a nice pile of logs and a mostly numb hand (vibrations and nerve damage don't mix).
-
I quickly found out my hand said no to pruning shears and my arms said no to the loppers. They gave me no choice so I was forced to play with the chainsaw.
I now have a nice pile of logs and a mostly numb hand (vibrations and nerve damage don't mix).
-
I quickly found out my hand said no to pruning shears and my arms said no to the loppers. They gave me no choice so I was forced to play with the chainsaw.
I now have a nice pile of logs and a mostly numb hand (vibrations and nerve damage don't mix).
-
A film everyone must see
On Monday, 27th April, I visited STC, formerly known as St Thomas’ Church, Crookes, for a Community screening of the National Emergency Briefing film. There was a good-sized audience of around 60 people, but I’m guessing most were already quite knowledgeable about the climate and nature emergencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaI-dHgh65Q
The 50-minute film combines authoritative scientific content from the Westminster briefing in November last year, with reactions from members of the public and some more familiar faces, such as Jennifer Saunders and Deborah Meaden, which help audiences process the information on a more human level. It delivers the frank facts about the threats, but also the enormous benefits if the Government leads genuine emergency action.
The film features scientific evidence from experts such as Professor Tim Lenton on tipping points and Professor Paul Barran on food security. It covers climate impacts on national security, health, and the economy.
As a teacher, I always used to try to avoid tipping points. Kids would love to lean back in their chairs, and inevitably, they would occasionally go past the tipping point and end up on the floor. Climate tipping points are events that could radically change the global climate, such as the death of a rainforest, the collapse of an ice sheet, or the failure of an ocean circulation system, leading to rising sea levels and catastrophic changes in temperatures.
People who have seen the film have commented that although the facts are alarming, they felt a sense of optimism about confronting the challenge together and seeing a pathway to a better future.
Lucy Gavaghan was quoted in’Now Then, calling the film “…a masterclass in public communications… Somehow, it’s peppered with hope without feeling glib, occasionally witty without being gimmicky, and harrowing without leaving you fully numb…This film’s brilliance lies in the simple fact that it is harder to ignore than it is to respond to.”
Sarah Daly wrote in LinkedIn, “This film isn’t designed to sow fear, it is about hope. It’s about knowledge as power and the opportunity for grown-up conversations so that our political leaders can no longer pretend it’s business as usual, bow to industry lobbyists and vested interests and kick the can on decisions that affect our very survival through this decade and beyond. “
The film was conceived and developed by Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag at Climate Comms Lab Utopia Bureau.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ihBP0_zEO0
After the film, we split into small group discussions. Some audience reactions included Dave’s, who said, “The bulk of the responsibility does lie with the Government. We need to force the Government to tell the truth and to act.” Matthew had been impressed with the success of Sheffield’s Green Bonds, which very quickly raised £1million to purchase solar panels for school roofs. He wanted a national bond that people could invest in, so that the proceeds could be used to solve the climate and nature crises. Anne said she would spread the word in her local WhatsApp group and Book Group, because the film is very powerful.
Ideally, everyone needs to see this film, especially decision makers like MP’s and Councillors, Business leaders, Educationalists, Bankers, Health Executives, Generals – there isn’t a role that is not affected by the climate and nature emergencies and people in every walk of life need to be aware of what the experts are saying and how we can best meet the challenges. I’m pleased to say that following my question at the end of the meeting, the two Councillors present, Minesh Parekh and Ruth Milsom, were able to say that a showing would be organised for all the Sheffield Councillors at the Town Hall. Perhaps you could help organise a showing of the film in your local community, workplace or place of worship.
The idea is to build up a big community of activists who have seen the film, to pressure the BBC and other broadcasters to show it on prime-time television. During COVID, we had regular Emergency Briefings. We now need these for Climate and Nature.
The Government should launch a science-led national emergency response to climate and nature breakdown, showing the same leadership and determination as in World War 2. This should include emergency legislation to drive a rapid reduction in emissions whilst investing to adapt to a more dangerous climate. Evidence shows that such action will create jobs and improve lives.
International climate conferences have failed to deliver the scale of global action needed. By taking these steps, the UK can establish the credibility required to help lead by example to drive the global action that people across the world are calling for.
Teams of volunteers are organising showings all over Sheffield and inviting MP’s and the public to see it. There have already been showings at Stannington, Sheffield University, Broomhall and the Energy Centre on Cambridge Street. The next showings are
The Light Wed 20th May 19.30
Sheffield Hallam University 16 July
Dr Cathy Rhodes, the Diocesan Environment Officer, helped organise this screening with the local Eco Church group, made up of people from 4 congregations. She said, “The Climate and Nature Emergency is accelerating and becoming really critical. We need to wake up and hear our call to care for God’s creation, vulnerable people, and address climate injustice. We’re hoping that, in showing the film in churches throughout the Diocese, and indeed to all denominations throughout the country, we will raise awareness, give opportunities to people to listen and learn, come together and begin to take action. The Church of England and Green Christians have some excellent resources that can be made available. Contact us via the diocesan website.
Please write to your MP to invite them to the 16th July screening
Please use this template to invite your MP to the screening on 16th July.
Dear [MP’s Name],
I am writing as your constituent to invite you to attend a local screening of the People’s Emergency Briefing film.
The UK faces a growing climate and nature emergency, but most people have never been fully briefed on what it means for our lives, our economy and our future. This new film from the National Emergency Briefing sets out the risks facing the nation – and the credible, positive responses available.
Location: Adsetts Centre, SHU City Campus, City Centre, S1 1WB (Arundel Gate entrance)
Date: 16 July
Time: 19:00 (Door open at 19:00 for a prompt start at 19:15)Over 200 Sheffield residents are expected to attend, so this will be a great chance for you to engage with your constituents.
The film features footage from last November’s National Emergency Briefing, which brought together leading UK experts in climate science, food security, health, economics, national security and nature. It presents a clear, measured overview of how the climate and nature crisis is affecting everyday life in Britain – and what the evidence says about the risks and the responses needed.
The film exists to give the public the same information Parliament received in November, helping people understand the challenges before us.The initiative is explicitly non-partisan, and the events are designed as open community conversations rather than political platforms. It has support from a wide range of organisations, including the National Trust, the Church of England, Exeter University, the Royal Meteorological Society, WWF, the National Education Union, and many more.
Following the 45-minute film, we will host a 45-minute structured discussion on what this means for our local community, and it would be great if you could attend and join the conversation. Your presence at the event, as a participant in the discussion or just engaging with constituents, would demonstrate how important this issue is to all of us.
I appreciate that you have many draws on your time, but it would be so valuable if you could attend. I will be going to the event – please let me know if you are able to join us.
With best wishes,
[Your Name]
[Address / Postcode/ Tel No/ email – MPs often ask for these details to check you are a constituent before reading and responding to emails].
Here is a list of Sheffield MP email addresses.[email protected] (Brightside & Hillsborough)
#BBC #ChrisPackham #climateChange #DeborahMeaden #DrCathyRhodes #EcoBureau #environment #Film #JenniferSaunders #NationalEmergencyBriefing #news #politics #SheffieldCityCouncil #SheffieldDiocese #TippingPoints #UtopiaBureau
[email protected] (Central)
[email protected] (Hallam)
[email protected] (Heeley)
[email protected] (Sheffield South East)
[email protected] (Penistone & Stocksbridge) -
I’ve Spent My Whole Life Refusing to Break, and It’s Slowly Breaking Everything I Love
8,993 words, 48 minutes read time.
They call me “the rock” at work.
At first, I thought it was a joke. Some intern started it during a brutal deadline last year. Half our team was losing it, one guy had a full-on meltdown in the stairwell, and I just… didn’t. I stayed late, knocked out my part, kept my voice even, answered questions, didn’t yell. Next day in standup, the intern goes, “Ask the rock, he never cracks,” and everyone laughed.
But it stuck.
Now my manager calls me that. “Put it on Matt’s plate, he’s a rock.” People say it like a compliment. Like it’s this badge of honor, being the guy who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t cry, doesn’t panic.
I pretended I didn’t like it. “C’mon, I’m just doing my job.” But I liked it. A lot. It felt like proof I’d finally escaped where I came from.
Growing up, the only thing worse than being poor in our neighborhood was being soft. I remember one time, I was probably eight or nine, playing basketball in the driveway, and I tripped. Scraped my knee so bad the skin just peeled back. I started crying, like loud ugly kid-crying—snot, hiccups, the works.
My dad walked out, looked at me, then at my knee, then back at me.
“You done?” he said.
“It hurts,” I blubbered.
He shook his head. “It’s a scrape, not a bullet. Stop crying, be a man.”
He went back inside. That phrase seared itself into my brain: Stop crying, be a man. I stopped crying. Not just that day. In general.
Whole life since then has been me trying to prove I listened.
So yeah, “the rock” fits.
What nobody at the office knows is I had to lock myself in a stall in the men’s room last week because my heart was racing so hard I thought I might pass out. I sat on the toilet lid, head in my hands, breathing like a woman in labor, trying not to make a sound because God forbid someone hears me having a panic attack.
Rocks don’t hyperventilate in bathroom stalls.
But that’s kind of my thing: feel something, shove it down, slap a lid on it, move on. I’m a professional at it now.
Church people call it “being strong.” Clinical people call it “emotional repression.” I just call it survival.
My wife, Emily, calls it “shutting down.” She says it calmly, like she’s reading a weather report, but her eyes get that glossy look that tells me I’m supposed to say something deep right there. I never do. I go for safe. Joke. Change the subject. Or pull the nuclear option: “I’m just tired, can we not do this right now?”
Which is basically our marriage in twelve words.
We’ve been married nine years. We have a seven-year-old daughter, Lily, who looks exactly like Emily except with my eyebrows, which feels unfair to her, but whatever. We met in college at some Christian campus thing I only went to because there were free burritos. She saw through most of my crap from day one, which I think is why I married her and also why I can’t stand her sometimes.
She’s a feeler. Like, professionally. She does counseling with teens at a nonprofit. She comes home wrecked from some kid’s story and wants to sit on the couch and process it for an hour. She cries at TV commercials. She said “I feel” more in the first month I knew her than my dad probably has in his entire life.
First time she cried in front of me, I freaked out internally. Panic, sirens, red lights. Externally, I was smooth. I put my arm around her, said all the right words. I didn’t know what I was doing, but she looked at me like I’d just parted the Red Sea. “I feel safe with you,” she said.
I should’ve told her then: “I don’t do feelings. I just do rescue.” But I liked being the safe guy. The rock.
Now, nine years in, that “safe” guy has turned into something else. A wall. A locked door. A black hole.
She sits at our kitchen table some Tuesday night, wine glass in hand, staring at me over a half-eaten plate of chicken and rice.
“You’re not here,” she says. “I mean, you’re physically here, but you’re not here.”
“I’m literally sitting right in front of you,” I say, stabbing a piece of chicken. “What do you want, a hologram?”
She doesn’t laugh. “Matt, I’m serious. I don’t know what you’re feeling. Ever. I don’t know when you’re scared. Or angry. Or sad. I can’t read you anymore. It’s like there’s this glass wall. I can see you, but I can’t reach you.”
I chew slowly to give myself time. Classic tactic. Delay, defuse, divert.
“I’m just tired,” I say. “Work’s a lot. Dad’s situation’s a lot. This is just… a season.”
Her jaw tightens at the word “season.” She hates Christian clichés, and I use them like shields.
“You said that last year,” she says. “And the year before. ‘It’s just a season.’ When does this season end, Matt? When you burn out? When we’re divorced? When Lily’s grown and doesn’t even bother to call you?”
“Wow,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Okay, that escalated.”
That’s another move: if I make her feel dramatic, I get to feel sane.
She takes a breath, looks down at the table. “I’m asking you to let me in,” she says, softer. “Talk to me. Tell me when you’re drowning instead of pretending you’re fine. You don’t have to be the rock, Matt. Not with me.”
There’s this moment where I actually feel it—the opening, the offer. Like a crack in the armor. I could tell her about the bathroom stall. About how sometimes at two in the morning my heart’s pounding like I’m on mile ten of a run and I can’t sleep, so I scroll my phone until my eyes burn. About the weird chest tightness that makes me think of my dad in the hospital, tubes and machines and beeping, and how I’m still that kid in the driveway trying not to cry.
I even start to say it. “Sometimes at work I—”
The words get stuck in my throat. There’s this primal shame that hits like a wave. If I say it out loud, it’s real. If she hears it, she’ll see I’m not a rock. I’m a scared dude in a grown man’s clothes with a half-charged iPhone and a Bible app he barely opens.
I clear my throat. “Sometimes at work I just need to, like, zone out, you know? Nothing crazy. I just power through.”
She watches me. She knows I pulled up right before the truth. I can see it in her eyes, that flash of disappointment before she buries it. She nods like she’s trying to accept the crumbs.
“Maybe we should go to counseling,” she says.
And there it is. The one word I refuse to let into my story.
“We’re not that bad,” I say, way too fast. “Counseling’s for people who are… like… actually falling apart. We’re just in a stressful patch. Money’s tight, work’s nuts, your job is heavy, my dad almost died. We don’t need to pay someone a hundred and fifty bucks an hour to tell us what we already know.”
“That’s not what counseling is,” she says.
I shrug. “You’re a counselor, obviously you’re pro-counseling. But I—what would I even say? ‘Hi, I’m Matt, things are fine, my wife just wants me to cry more’?”
She closes her eyes like my words physically hurt. “This isn’t about crying,” she says. “This is about you. Letting. Me. See. You.”
“I married you, didn’t I?” I say. “You see me. This is me.”
That’s the line I always throw out when I want to shut the conversation down—“This is just who I am.” It sounds like honesty, like self-awareness, but really it’s defense. A way of saying, “I’m not changing.”
She stares at me for a long time. Then she gets up, takes her plate to the sink without another word.
I tell myself she’s being emotional. That she’ll calm down. That it’s not that bad. That I’m not that bad.
That night, after she goes to bed, I sit on the couch with my laptop. I tell myself I’m going to do a little work, get ahead of tomorrow. Ten minutes in, I’m already opening a second browser window.
It’s funny how my brain knows the path without thinking. A couple keystrokes, a few clicks, and there it is: curated, pixel-perfect nakedness. I scroll, numb. That’s really what it is. Not lust so much as anesthesia. My own private pharmacy.
I justify it. I’m not sleeping with anyone else. I’m not on Tinder. I’m not at a bar hitting on girls who call me “sir.” This is safe. It’s victimless. It’s just… stress relief. And if I ever tried to talk to Emily about how I actually feel, I’d probably scare her. This way, I take care of it myself.
Self-sufficiency, right? That’s what being a man is. Handle your own crap.
I close the laptop an hour later feeling gross, but the guilt is dull. Familiar. Easy to ignore. I tiptoe into the bedroom. She’s already turned away from my side, curled in a C-shape near the edge. I slide into bed, careful not to touch her too much, in case she wants space. Or in case she doesn’t, because if she turns toward me, I might have to be present.
In the dark, my phone buzzes on the nightstand. I check it. It’s Marcus.
You good, man?
Marcus is my one semi-real friend from church. Taller than me, quieter. Used to be a cop, now does security at a hospital. He’s the kind of guy who actually listens when you talk. Like, fully. It’s unnerving.
He’s the only one who’s ever looked me in the eye and asked, “How’s your heart?” without smirking. I laughed when he said it the first time. “Bro, what are we, in a Nicholas Sparks movie?” He smiled, but he didn’t take it back.
I stare at his text for a second. My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
I’m fine, just tired, I type.
I delete “just tired.” It sounds weak. I send: I’m good. Busy with work. You?
The truth would be: I’m not sleeping, my wife wants to send me to counseling like I’m broken, I spent an hour watching porn to avoid feeling anything, and my chest hurts more days than not. Also sometimes I want to just drive until I run out of gas and start over somewhere no one knows I’m supposed to be “the rock.”
He replies: Same. Let’s grab lunch this week. Been thinking about you.
Cool, I send. Let me know when.
I set my phone down and roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Some random verse I half-remember from a sermon floats through my brain: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.”
I snort quietly. I’m not brokenhearted. I’m just busy.
Work does not care about your feelings. My manager, Jeff, cares about deliverables and client satisfaction scores and how many hours the team can bill without triggering HR. There’s a massive software deployment next month. If we nail it, it’s big for the company. If we blow it, we lose a multi-million-dollar client. No pressure.
We shuffle into the conference room for yet another war room meeting. Screens everywhere, coffee cups, people with that glazed “I’ve been on Zoom for 12 hours” look in their eyes.
Jeff slaps my back. “How’s my rock?” he says, grinning.
“Ready to roll,” I say.
“Good, because if this thing slips again, I’m gonna have to start sacrificing junior devs to the client gods.”
Everyone laughs. I do too, even as that familiar tightness creeps into my chest. I tell myself it’s just caffeine. I’ve had three coffees and a Red Bull. Anyone’s heart would pound.
Halfway through the meeting, someone mentions layoffs. Not directly, but hints. “If this doesn’t go well, upper management’s gonna be asking hard questions.” Translation: people will get cut. People like me. People like the guy who had a meltdown in the stairwell last year and mysteriously “transitioned to new opportunities” two months later.
Rocks don’t get laid off. Weak links do. If I crack, I’m a liability.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from my mom: Dad had another episode. Doctors want to run more tests. Can you come by tonight?
I swallow, staring at the message.
You okay? Jeff says, noticing my face.
“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Family stuff. I’m good.”
I tuck it away. Mental note: hospital. Later. After being the rock at work, I get to be the rock for my mom. Then maybe, if I have any energy left, I’ll toss Emily a pebble and call it connection.
During a break, I slip into the men’s room. I splash water on my face. As I look up, my reflection stares back at me. Thirty-six, a little more gray at the temples than I’d like, dark circles under my eyes. But my expression is neutral. Controlled. Rock-solid. You’d never know that inside, there’s this constant hum of static.
My chest tightens again. The room tilts for a second. I grab the edge of the sink.
Not now. Not here.
I duck into a stall before anyone walks in, sit on the lid, elbows on my knees, hands over my face. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. I count my breaths. I feel ridiculous, a grown man hiding in a toilet cubicle trying not to pass out.
Somewhere behind the stall door I hear my dad’s voice: Stop crying, be a man.
“I’m not crying,” I mutter. “I’m breathing.”
Same thing, really. Trying to keep the dam from breaking.
I think, briefly, of all the verses I’ve heard about not being afraid. “Do not be anxious about anything.” “Fear not.” “The Lord is my rock.” It’s funny how I’ve basically replaced God with my own chest. My own calm face. Like, I’m my own Lord and rock. That’s not how I’d say it out loud, but that’s how I live.
After work, I swing by the hospital. Dad’s sitting up in bed, watching some game show with the sound off, wires stuck to his chest. Mom’s in the chair by the window, hands folded, Bible open but unread on her lap.
“Hey,” I say, stepping in. “How’s the party?”
Dad grunts. “Food sucks.”
“That’s how you know it’s a real hospital,” I say. “If they start serving steak, you should worry.”
He smirks. Mom gives me a tired smile. I do the thing I always do in hard rooms: crack jokes, keep it light, distract from the elephant.
“How you feeling?” I ask, even though I can read the chart as well as he can.
“Old,” he says. “Doctors say it’s not as bad as last time. Just gotta ‘take it easy.’ Whatever that means.”
“You gonna listen?” I ask.
He snorts. We both know he won’t. Men in my family don’t “take it easy.” We work until something breaks, then we duct tape it and keep going.
Mom looks at me like she wants to say something spiritual. She’s the only one in our family who does feelings out loud, but years married to my dad trained her to make them small.
“Been praying Psalm 34,” she says softly. “You know that one, honey? ‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’”
She says it like it’s comfort, a warm blanket. I hear it like an accusation. Brokenhearted? Crushed? That’s not allowed. Not for men like us. We’re not brokenhearted, we’re just… busy. Tired. Overworked. Slightly malfunctioning machines.
“I like the one about ‘those who don’t work don’t eat,’” Dad says. “Keeps you honest.”
I laugh, grateful for the deflection.
Mom sighs. “Your father,” she says, half-affection, half-frustration.
On the drive home, the verse keeps replaying in my head. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” If that’s true, then what does that mean for me? Because most days, God feels about as close as the moon. Beautiful, in theory. Useless, in practice.
Maybe the problem is I’m not brokenhearted enough. Or maybe that’s just another way to blame myself for something I don’t understand.
Thursday night is men’s group. I go mostly because it looks good. A married Christian dad who skips men’s group raises eyebrows. A married Christian dad who shows up, brings chips, cracks jokes, and nods thoughtfully during prayer requests gets approved.
We meet in the church basement, twelve guys in folding chairs in a sad circle under fluorescent lights that make everyone look tired and slightly dead. There’s the usual spread: chips, store-brand cookies, a veggie tray no one touches, and a big pot of coffee because apparently we’re all eighty.
Our leader, Dan, is a big guy with a beard that makes him look like a gentle lumberjack. He opens in prayer, then reads a short passage.
“Tonight,” he says, “I thought we’d just… be honest. No study guide. No video. Just us, talking about what’s real.”
That sentence alone makes my skin itch.
He reads Psalm 34:18. Of course. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
I feel it in my chest, right where the anxiety sits. The words are like a hand hovering over a bruise.
Dan looks around. “Who here would say they feel brokenhearted right now?” he asks. “Crushed in spirit? Not in theory. Right now.”
One guy laughs nervously. A couple shift in their chairs. I take a sip of coffee to buy time. No way I’m raising my hand. Brokenhearted is for widowers and addicts and cancer patients. Not white-collar project managers with upgraded iPhones and a leased SUV.
To my left, Jason clears his throat. He’s usually one of the louder guys, all stories about sports and his glory days playing college ball. Tonight, he looks smaller.
“I, uh…” He stares at the floor. His voice cracks. “My wife left last month. Took the kids. I haven’t told anyone ’cause… I’m embarrassed, I guess. I feel like I failed. I’ve been using porn for years. Said I’d stop a hundred times. Didn’t. She found stuff on my phone and just… had enough.”
The room goes quiet. My stomach twists. I keep my face still.
He keeps talking, words spilling now. “I always thought I had it under control, you know? Like, it was my thing. My stress relief. Better than cheating. That’s what I told myself. But she said it was cheating. She said I was choosing pixels over her. I don’t even… I don’t know how to live in my own skin right now. I feel… crushed. I don’t know how else to say it.”
Tears slide down his face. Full-grown man, shoulders shaking, crying in a church basement under bad lighting. Every alarm in my body goes off. Run. Joke. Change the subject.
Instead, something weird happens. Dan gets up, walks over, puts a hand on his shoulder. Another guy kneels and starts praying softly, nothing fancy, just, “God, be close. Help him.” No one mocks. No one rolls their eyes. A couple other guys are wiping their faces too.
I feel this pressure rising in my throat. It scares me more than any panic attack.
This could be you, a voice in my head whispers. You could talk. You could tell them about the stall, the late nights, the way your wife looks at you like a stranger. You could say you’re not okay. You could stop playing the rock.
I picture it for a second. Me, opening my mouth, saying, “Guys, I’m not fine. I’m addicted to being okay. And to porn. And to people thinking I have it together. My wife wants to leave and it’s mostly my fault.” I imagine their faces, their hands on my shoulder, the prayers. I imagine God feeling near instead of abstract.
My heart starts hammering. My palms sweat. My knee bounces.
Dan looks around. “Anybody else?” he says gently. “You don’t have to share. But if you want to, this is a safe place.”
Everyone’s eyes are suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. Shoelaces. Coffee cups. The scuffed tile. No one wants to be next.
I clear my throat.
“I mean…” I say, forcing a smirk. “My biggest sin is I eat too many carbs. So, uh, pray for me, guys.”
A few chuckle. The tension breaks a little. Dan gives me a half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Inside, I want to punch myself. That was my out. My shot. I could have been honest. Instead, I threw a joke at the most honest moment I’ve seen in years like a grenade.
The rest of the night passes in a blur of surface-level shares. Work stress. Kids. “I should read my Bible more.” I mumble something about being busy. When we close in prayer, I mumble a safe Christian phrase: “God, thank you that you’re strong when we’re weak.” It sounds holy. It’s a lie coming from my mouth.
After group, as we’re heading to our cars, Marcus falls into step beside me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m good,” I say automatically. “That was… heavy, huh?”
He studies me. “Yeah. But good heavy.” He pauses. “You sure you’re okay? You were twitchy during prayer.”
“Twitchy?” I scoff. “Bro, I had too much coffee. That’s all.”
He doesn’t push. “If you ever want to talk,” he says, “for real… I’m here. No judgment. None of us are as put-together as we look. You know that, right?”
I shrug, unlock my car. “I’m fine, man. Seriously. Just tired.”
That night, Emily’s on the couch when I get home, laptop closed, TV off. That’s never a good sign.
“How was group?” she asks.
“Good,” I say, dropping my keys in the bowl. “You know. Guys. Bibles. Bad coffee.”
“Did you share anything?” she asks.
I bristle. “What is this, a report card?”
She folds her hands. “I just… you’ve been off. For a while. I was hoping you’d talk to someone.”
“Talked to God,” I say. “That counts, right?”
She does that slow blink that means she’s trying not to explode. “You know what I mean.”
I do. I ignore it. I sit in the chair across from her instead of next to her on the couch. It’s a distance of three feet that feels like thirty miles.
She takes a breath. “I called a counselor,” she says.
Something in me snaps. “You what?”
“I called a counselor,” she repeats, voice shaking slightly but steady. “For us. For our marriage. Her name is—”
“We don’t need—”
“—Sarah Stevens,” she says, talking over me, which she almost never does. “She’s highly recommended. She has experience with couples where one partner is emotionally unavailable.”
“Emotionally unavailable,” I repeat, like it’s a slur.
“That’s what you are, Matt,” she says, and now the tears are in her eyes. “You’re unavailable. I’m married to a ghost. You show up physically, you pay bills, you fix things when they break, but you don’t let me see you. I feel like I’m begging you to be my husband.”
My defenses go up so fast I’m dizzy. “That’s not fair,” I say. “I go to work every day. I come home. I spend time with Lily. I go to church. I go to your family stuff even when I don’t want to. I provide. I don’t cheat. I don’t hit you. I don’t drink myself stupid. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do and somehow it’s not enough because I don’t sit around talking about my feelings?”
“You don’t talk about anything real,” she says. “Do you know how alone I feel? I would almost rather you scream at me than stay like this. At least then I’d know there’s something in there.”
“That’s insane,” I say, standing up. “You’d rather I scream at you?”
“I’d rather you be honest,” she fires back.
I pace. “Fine. Here’s honest: I don’t want to sit in a room with some stranger and have you list all the ways I suck while she nods and takes notes.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m not doing it,” I say. “I’m not broken. We’re not broken. We’re just stressed.”
“And I’m telling you we are broken,” she says, standing now too, voice rising. “We are so broken, Matt. I’m drowning over here. I lie awake next to you at night and I feel like a widow before I’m even forty.”
The widow line hits harder than I want to admit. My mom in that hospital chair, Bible open, eyes tired. Is that Emily’s future?
I can’t go there. Too much. Shut it down.
“This is drama,” I say, dismissive. “You’re making it worse than it is.”
Her mouth falls open. “Drama,” she repeats. “Okay.”
She walks past me, into the bedroom. I hear drawers opening, the squeak of the closet door. A minute later she comes out with a duffel bag. She starts throwing clothes in it. T-shirts, jeans, underwear, random stuff. No method, just motion.
“What are you doing?” I ask, stomach dropping.
“Going to my sister’s,” she says. “For a while.”
“You’re leaving,” I say, like I can’t process the words.
“I’m not filing for divorce,” she says. “Yet. I’m giving you space. And I’m giving myself a chance to remember what it’s like to breathe.”
“Emily, come on,” I say, moving toward her. “You’re overreacting.”
She stops packing, looks up at me, and laughs. It’s a bitter sound I’ve never heard from her before.
“You keep saying that,” she says. “Anytime I tell you I’m hurting, I’m ‘overreacting.’ Anytime I say we need help, you say I’m ‘making it worse than it is.’ I’m done gaslighting myself into thinking I’m crazy. This is real, Matt. I’m leaving because you already have. You left a long time ago. You’re just… physically present.”
“That’s not fair,” I repeat, because I don’t have any other words.
She zips the bag. “I’m giving you one more chance,” she says, voice trembling. “You call that counselor. You set up an appointment. You show me with actions, not words, that you’re willing to be vulnerable. To let me in. To let anyone in. If you don’t… I don’t know if there’s anything left to save.”
She walks past me, bag over her shoulder. She stops at Lily’s door, pushes it open. Our daughter’s asleep, sprawled sideways, stuffed unicorn under one arm. Emily kisses her forehead, whispers something I can’t hear.
“I’ll bring her back Sunday night,” she says quietly when she returns. “You can have the weekend to… think.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, hating how small my voice sounds.
She meets my eyes. “Stop pretending you’re okay,” she says. “That’d be a start.”
The front door closes behind her. The house is dead quiet.
I stand in the middle of the living room, staring at the door like it might swing back open and she’ll say, “Kidding!” But it doesn’t. She doesn’t.
Instead of collapsing, I do what I always do: I make a list. Dishes. Laundry. Trash. Budget. I straighten the cushions on the couch, because God forbid a pillow be crooked while my marriage implodes.
Later that night, I get a text from Marcus.
Heard Emily and Lily are staying with her sister. You want company?
My heart stutters. News travels fast in church circles.
I stare at the screen. I picture Marcus on my couch, looking at me with those annoyingly kind eyes, asking questions I don’t want to answer. What are you afraid of? How are you really? When did you start disappearing?
I type: Nah man, we’re fine. Just needed some space. Couples fight, you know.
I delete “we’re fine” because even I can’t make my thumbs lie that hard. I send: Just needed some space. All good.
He replies immediately. You sure? I can be there in 15.
I put the phone face down on the coffee table. I pace. I pick it up again.
Come, I type. I delete it.
I’m not sure what I’m more afraid of: him seeing the stack of dirty dishes and empty wrappers that prove I’m not as together as I act, or him seeing through whatever story I spin and calling me on it.
I finally send: I’m good bro. Exhausted. Rain check?
Three dots appear, disappear. Finally: Okay. I’m here if you need me. For real.
I toss the phone onto the couch like it burned me. I grab my laptop instead.
By 1 a.m., the house is dark, the only light the blue glow of my screen. Pop-up after pop-up, tab after tab. My brain is buzzing, my body’s numb. I tell myself it’s better than thinking. Better than feeling. Better than sitting in the silence and hearing my own excuses bounce off the walls.
When I finally crash into bed, the sheets on her side are still warm from when she packed.
The next morning, Lily’s empty room hits me harder than I want to admit. Her bed is made (Emily’s doing), stuffed animals lined up, tiny socks in the hamper. I stand in the doorway, an intruder in my own house.
I go to work like nothing happened. Because that’s what you do. You compartmentalize. You put on the rock mask. You get stuff done.
My performance drops, though. It’s subtle at first. I miss a detail here, forget an email there. Nothing huge. But in this job, death comes by a thousand paper cuts.
A junior dev, Sarah, points out a flaw in my plan in front of the team. Normally, I’d thank her, adjust. Today, raw and sleep-deprived, I snap.
“Maybe if you’d read the full spec before chiming in, you’d understand why we did it this way,” I say, harsher than I mean to.
The room goes quiet. She shrinks back, face flushing. Jeff raises an eyebrow at me.
“Let’s take this offline,” he says.
After the meeting, he pulls me into his office.
“You good?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
He leans back, folds his arms. “Look, I don’t need to know your personal business. But you bit Sarah’s head off in there. That’s not like you.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Just… a lot going on at home.”
“Take a day,” he says. “Or a few. Whatever you need. This project’s important, but not as important as you not burning out.”
The irony of my boss telling me not to burn out while I’m actively burning out isn’t lost on me.
“I’m good,” I repeat. “I just need to focus.”
He studies me for a second. “You know,” he says slowly, “you don’t always have to be the rock.”
I actually laugh. “You started that, remember?”
He smiles. “Yeah. Turns out sometimes rocks crack. Just… don’t wait until you blow up to tell someone you’re drowning, okay?”
Everyone keeps using the same metaphors. Drowning. Burning out. Breaking. I keep dodging them like bullets in a video game. If I just keep moving, they can’t hit me.
Days blur. Emily and I text logistics about Lily. Pickup times, homework, dentist appointments. Nothing real. It’s like running a small business together instead of a marriage.
One Friday, I’m supposed to pick up Lily at four for her school’s little talent show thing. She’s been practicing a silly dance for weeks, making me watch it every night I had the energy to pretend I was watching. “You’re coming, right, Daddy?” she asked. “You promise?” I promised.
Friday afternoon, I’m sitting at my desk, headphones in, trying to yank my brain through a spreadsheet, when a familiar tightness clamps my chest. I take a breath. Another. It doesn’t let up. My vision goes a little fuzzy at the edges.
I check the clock. 3:50. If I leave now, I can make it.
I tell myself: Just one more email. Just fix this one thing. Then go.
I look up again and it’s 4:27.
“Crap,” I say aloud, ripping my headphones off. I grab my bag, half-run to the elevator, curse at the slow doors, sprint to my car.
On the drive, my phone buzzes with texts. I don’t check them. I don’t want to see.
I pull into the school lot at 4:58, heart pounding. I jog toward the auditorium. It’s emptying. Parents filing out, kids with glitter on their faces and handmade certificates.
Emily stands near the doors with Lily. Lily’s in a sparkly shirt, hair in two lopsided pigtails, holding a crumpled ribbon. Her eyes are red. When she sees me, her face does this thing—lights up, then falters, like she’s trying to decide whether to be happy or mad.
“Hey!” I say, forcing cheer. “I’m so sorry, traffic was—”
“Traffic?” Emily says, voice flat. “Show started at four.”
“I know, I just—work ran late and—”
“You promised,” Lily says quietly. That hurts way worse than Emily’s tone.
“I know, bug,” I say, kneeling. “I’m sorry. How’d it go?”
“Fine,” she says, shrugging, looking at her shoes. The word is a knife. It’s my own word coming back to kill me. I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine.
“Mom filmed it,” she adds. “You can watch it later.”
It’s an offer. A consolation prize. I hate myself for being the kind of dad who has to watch his daughter’s life on a screen because he can’t show up when it counts.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’d love to.”
Emily just looks at me. No lecture. Somehow, that’s worse.
On the drive back to my place, Lily hums a bit of her song in the backseat. I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles go white. I want to cry. The feeling is so foreign it scares me. I swallow it. It goes down like a rock.
That night, after I drop Lily back at her aunt’s, I sit in my dark living room alone. The quiet isn’t peaceful. It’s accusatory.
On the coffee table, my Bible sits under a pile of mail. I don’t remember the last time I opened it for me, not for a group or to find a verse to toss at someone else.
I push the mail aside, flip it open randomly. It lands in Psalms. My eyes fall on familiar words like they’re highlighted just for me:
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
No escape this time. No sermon. No small group. Just me and a sentence that won’t shut up.
I stare at the page until the letters blur. Something in my chest finally gives. Not a big cinematic break, just a tiny hairline crack.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Fine. I’m… not okay.”
The words feel like ripping duct tape off my soul. My throat burns. My eyes sting. My body, not used to this, fights it. But my arms suddenly feel too heavy to hold up. I slide off the couch onto my knees without meaning to, Bible still open on the cushion.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I mutter. “I don’t know how to be… brokenhearted. Or whatever. I don’t know how to…” I wave a hand vaguely, like God needs me to pantomime emotions.
Tears spill over. Real ones. First time in… I honestly can’t remember. Maybe when Lily was born. Maybe before that.
It feels… ridiculous. A grown man, kneeling by his IKEA couch, crying into old carpet. I half-expect lightning to strike or a worship band to appear in my hallway. Instead, it’s just me and my ragged breathing and an almost-tangible sense that something—Someone—is near.
For a second, I actually feel it. Like a warm weight on my shoulders. An invisible Presence sitting in the mess with me. Not fixing it. Just… close. The verse slams into my chest again: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
Maybe this is what they mean. Maybe all the sermons and testimonies and emotional people with their arms raised weren’t just making it up. Maybe God actually shows up in the raw places. Not the polished, rehearsed testimonies, but the ugly middle.
“Okay,” I whisper again. “I’m scared. Is that what you want me to say? I’m scared my dad’s gonna die and I won’t know how to grieve. I’m scared my wife’s never coming back. I’m scared I’ve already ruined my daughter’s life. I’m scared if people see how weak I am they’ll lose respect for me. I’m scared you’re not actually here and I’m just talking to my furniture.”
It all comes out in a rush. Confession, sort of. Not the respectable kind you share in group. The embarrassing kind.
For about thirty seconds, it feels like the safest place in the world.
Then, just as quickly, another voice kicks in. Not literal, not demonic, just… me. The old script.
Stop crying, be a man.
Crying won’t fix your marriage. Emotions won’t get you a raise. Vulnerability won’t put food on the table. You’re kneeling on a stained carpet, talking to someone you can’t see, while your actual life is on fire. Get up. Be practical. Make a plan. God helps those who help themselves. (Which, by the way, isn’t in the Bible, but I quote it like it is.)
I scrub my face with my hands, annoyed at the dampness. The Presence I felt a moment ago suddenly feels distant again. Or maybe I just pushed it away.
“Yeah, okay,” I say out loud, like I’m closing a meeting. “That was… something.”
I stand up, legs stiff. The room looks the same. Couch. TV. Empty picture hooks where our family photo used to hang before Emily took it. No angels. No burning bush. Just my stupid, beating heart and the hum of the fridge.
My phone buzzes on the table. It’s a notification from some Bible app I downloaded months ago and never use: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. – Psalm 147:3”
The timing is creepy. Or perfect. Or both.
I hover over the notification, feel the temptation to sink back down, to lean in, to actually let myself be wounded in front of God. To admit that I’m not just “off” or “tired” but actually… broken.
Instead, I swipe the notification away.
“I don’t have time to fall apart,” I mutter.
I open a browser and type the same old sites into the search bar. The algorithm knows me well. It feeds me what I want: distraction. Control. A world where nakedness is scripted and no one expects anything from me.
Later, in bed, I stare at the ceiling and tell myself I’ll call the counselor tomorrow. Or the day after. Or after this project. Or after Dad’s next appointment. Or after Emily gives me another ultimatum. There will always be a better time to be honest than now.
Months pass.
The project at work launches. It’s not a disaster, but it’s not the triumph it could’ve been. My performance review is “meets expectations” with a few pointed notes about “needing to delegate better” and “watching interpersonal tone under stress.” Translation: You’re slipping, man.
I don’t get fired. I also don’t get the promotion I’d been quietly gunning for. Jeff gives the lead on the next big project to Sarah—the junior dev I snapped at.
“She’s showed a lot of initiative,” he tells me in his office. “And you, honestly… you seem like you’ve got a lot on your plate. Thought this might be a good time for you to take a step back, catch your breath.”
Step back. Catch my breath. It’s like there’s this conspiracy in the universe to get me to stop pretending I’m okay.
I nod, say the right things. “Totally understand. Happy for her.” Inside, I feel humiliated. Replaced. Useless.
I don’t tell Emily. We barely talk beyond logistics anyway. The counselor’s number is still on a sticky note on my fridge. I move it occasionally when I wipe the counters. I’ve memorized the digits without ever dialing.
Lily spends every other weekend with me. We do what I think dads are supposed to do. We go to the park. We get ice cream. We watch movies. I make sure she’s buckled in right and that she brushes her teeth. I tell myself that’s enough. That love is mostly showing up and making sure they don’t die.
But sometimes, when she’s coloring at the table or building something with Legos on the floor, she’ll look up and just… watch me. Like she’s trying to figure out something she doesn’t have the words for yet.
One Sunday, as I’m dropping her back at her aunt’s place, she hugs me tighter than usual.
“Daddy?” she says into my shirt.
“Yeah, bug?”
“Are you sad?”
The question catches me off guard. I pull back, look at her small face. Her eyes are big, searching.
“Why do you ask?” I say.
“You look sad,” she says simply. “And Mommy looks sad. And Aunt Claire says it’s okay to be sad. But you always say you’re fine.”
The word stings again. Fine. My mask.
“I’m okay,” I say automatically.
She tilts her head. “It’s okay if you’re sad,” she says. “I won’t be scared.”
I should say it. Right there. To my seven-year-old. “Yeah, I’m sad. I miss you when you’re not here. I miss Mommy. I’m scared I messed up.” That would be vulnerability. Not oversharing, just honesty.
Instead, I pat her shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, kiddo,” I say. “That’s my job. To worry about you. You just be a kid, okay?”
She nods slowly, like she’s filing away data for later. “Okay,” she says. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say, and it’s the one thing I’m absolutely sure of.
After she runs inside, I sit in my car and grip the steering wheel. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down at a body of water that might save me or drown me. The jump is admitting weakness. The cliff is made of all the years I spent being told that men don’t cry, don’t talk, don’t crack.
I don’t jump.
Instead, I drive to church.
It’s easier to go when I don’t have Emily giving me side-eye during worship because I’m scrolling my phone under the seat. I can just show up, say hi to people, drink bad coffee, sing words I barely think about, nod through another sermon about some aspect of the Christian life I’m supposedly living.
Today, though, the pastor does something different. He doesn’t preach. He brings a guy up to share his story.
The guy is in his forties, shaved head, tattoos, looks like he could bench-press me. He takes the mic, clears his throat.
“I used to think being a man meant never showing weakness,” he says. My spine goes rigid. “My dad was old-school. ‘Quit crying, tough it out,’ that kind of thing. I brought that into my marriage, my friendships, even my faith. I believed in Jesus, but I didn’t actually trust Him with anything that made me look bad. Or weak.”
People chuckle. I don’t.
He talks about an affair. About losing his job. About almost losing his kids. Then he talks about the night he finally broke down on his kitchen floor, sobbing, telling God he was done pretending. How Psalm 34:18 popped into his head—“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted”—and how, for the first time, he actually felt it.
“I thought vulnerability would make me lose respect,” he says. “But hiding was what was killing me. My secrets hardened my heart. I was a shell. It wasn’t until I got honest—with God, with my wife, with some guys from this church—that anything changed.”
The sanctuary is dead quiet. People are leaning in. A couple of visibly tough dudes are wiping their eyes. I sit there, arms crossed, jaw clenched.
He keeps going. “I still struggle with pride. I still want to put on the strong face. But I’ve tasted what it’s like to let people see the cracks. And I’ve tasted what it’s like to have God meet me there, not when I’ve got it together but when I’m a mess. And I’ll tell you this: there’s more life in that than in all the years I spent playing the rock.”
Somewhere deep inside, something in me is nodding. Yes. That. Do that. Say something. Move.
I don’t.
After service, people swarm him. Thank you for sharing. That was powerful. I walk past, give a noncommittal nod. Inside, I’m seething. Not at him. At myself. At the distance between what I know is true and what I’m willing to live.
In the parking lot, my phone buzzes. Marcus again.
How are you really?
There’s that word. Really.
I stand in the cold air, thumb hovering.
I’m falling apart but pretending I’m not, I type. I delete it.
I’m tired, I type. Delete.
I settle on: I’m good. God’s got me.
Even my lies are wrapped in Christianese.
I don’t hit send yet. I stare at the blinking cursor. Beside me, a guy straps his toddler into a car seat, kisses his wife, laughs at something she says. Normal. Messy. Human.
The phrase from the testimony loops in my head: Hiding was what was killing me. My secrets hardened my heart.
I feel my own heart. Not metaphorically. Literally. My chest. It feels… hard. Numb. Like it should hurt more than it does.
Do I want God that close? Close to the brokenhearted sounds nice until you realize it means you have to admit you’re brokenhearted. Not over business, not over some abstract injustice. Over your own life. Your own choices. Your own refusal to be weak.
I could tell Marcus. Right now. I could say, “I’m not okay. Can we talk?” He’d answer. He’d show up. I know he would.
Instead, I backspace my half-typed message.
I send him a thumbs-up emoji.
That’s my spiritual state in one tiny yellow hand.
I get in my car, close the door, and the world goes quiet again. Just me, the dashboard, the buzz of the engine.
I think about Psalm 34:18. I think about my mom in that hospital chair, whispering it over my dad. I think about Emily at the kitchen table, begging me to let her in. I think about Lily asking if I’m sad and promising she wouldn’t be scared.
I think about the night on my knees by the couch, the fleeting sense that God was actually, tangibly near when I finally let something crack.
And I think about how fast I slammed that door shut.
That’s the thing no one tells you about vulnerability. You can get a glimpse of it, taste it for thirty seconds, and still decide you’d rather be alone in a locked room than risk anyone seeing you naked in your soul.
So that’s where I am.
In the car. In the locked room. Playing the part I’ve played my whole life.
The rock.
From the outside, I still look solid. Steady job. Decent clothes. Church attendance. A few Bible verses I can quote if needed. A daughter who still hugs me. A wife who hasn’t technically divorced me… yet.
Inside, I know the truth.
I’m not a rock. I’m a man-shaped shell built around a frightened kid who learned early that tears equal weakness and weakness equals rejection. I never unlearned it. I baptized it, gave it Bible verses, dressed it up in productivity and moral respectability.
Maybe one day I’ll break for real. Call the counselor. Call Marcus. Call out to God and not shut Him down when He shows up. Maybe I’ll finally let someone see how much I’m not okay and discover that maybe—just maybe—weakness isn’t the end of my story but the door to something like real strength.
But today?
Today I turn the key in the ignition, watch my reflection in the rearview mirror as I back out. My face is calm. Controlled. Unreadable.
Ask anyone who sees me drive away how I’m doing, and they’ll say the same thing.
He’s good. He’s strong. He’s the rock.
They’d be half right.
The other half?
The rock is crumbling. And I’m the only one who can hear it.
Author’s Note
I wrote this story because “I’m fine” has become one of the most dangerous lies men tell.
Not because everything has to turn into a group-therapy overshare, but because a lot of us have learned that being a man means one thing above all: don’t crack. Don’t cry. Don’t need. Don’t ask for help. Just keep performing—at work, at home, at church—and hope nobody notices how much of it is duct tape and denial.
Matt is fictional, but the patterns are not. The late-night anxiety. The quiet porn habit as a pressure valve. The marriage that looks stable from the outside but is running on fumes. The way “being strong” becomes a way to avoid being known. I didn’t want to write a neat testimony with a bow at the end. I wanted to sit in that awful in-between space where a man knows he’s not okay and still chooses to keep hiding.
If you picked up on the tension around Psalm 34:18—“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”—that was intentional. The verse is there like a constant background noise in Matt’s life. He hears it from his mom, at church, in group, on his Bible app. The problem isn’t that God is silent; it’s that Matt refuses to be the kind of man that verse is written for: brokenhearted, crushed, honest.
Underneath all the details, this story is about fear of vulnerability:
- Fear of losing respect if you admit weakness
- Fear of not knowing what to do with your own emotions if you stop stuffing them
- Fear that if you open up to God or other men, you’ll be met with judgment or awkward silence instead of real presence
The tragedy for Matt isn’t a dramatic car crash or public scandal. It’s the slow erosion of his soul and relationships because he clings to the image of “the rock” more than he clings to God or the people who actually love him. He gets glimpses of another way—a raw confession at men’s group, a quiet moment on the carpet where he finally lets himself cry, a daughter asking if he’s sad—and he still pulls back. That’s the haunting part. Nothing changes… and yet everything is slowly falling apart.
If this story resonated with you at all, even uncomfortably, that’s kind of the point. Not to shame you, not to diagnose you, and definitely not to tell you what you “have to” do. Just to hold up a mirror of what it actually looks like when hiding becomes a lifestyle.
Some men crash hard and obvious. Others, like Matt, just slowly harden. Their job title still works. Their faith still has all the right words. Their family still posts decent photos. But the inside is hollow. And the thing about hollowness is that it echoes. It haunts.
The core idea behind this whole series is simple and costly: Vulnerability is not an optional add-on to the Christian life or to healthy masculinity. It’s the doorway. To real brotherhood. To actual intimacy in marriage. To a faith that’s more than performance. To experiencing the God who is “close to the brokenhearted,” not to the perfectly put-together.
What you do with that is up to you. This story doesn’t end with Matt calling the counselor or breaking down in front of Marcus or sprinting back to Emily with a grand apology. It stops where a lot of men actually are: still in the car, still saying “I’m good,” still sending a thumbs-up emoji instead of telling the truth.
If anything in you recognized yourself in that final scene, don’t rush past it. Sit with the discomfort. Ask yourself, honestly, where you’re playing “the rock” and what it’s costing you. And if you decide to talk to God, or to a friend, or to a counselor about it—that’s your story. Not Matt’s. And it doesn’t have to end the way his does.
Call to Action
If this story struck a chord, don’t just scroll on. Join the brotherhood—men learning to build, not borrow, their strength. Subscribe for more stories like this, drop a comment about where you’re growing, or reach out and tell me what you’re working toward. Let’s grow together.
D. Bryan King
Sources
- Psalm 34:18 – The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
- John 11:33-35 – Jesus wept
- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – Power made perfect in weakness
- James 5:16 – Confess your sins to each other
- APA – Men and Mental Health: Why Men Are Less Likely to Seek Help
- APA Monitor – The Crisis in Masculinity and Emotional Expression
- Masculinity and Help-Seeking: Implications for Depression and Suicide Risk (PubMed)
- Gottman Institute – How Emotional Withdrawal Destroys Relationships
- Pornography Use and Relationship Satisfaction (NCBI)
- Psychology Today – Why Vulnerability Is Essential for Healthy Relationships
- BibleProject – The Bible and Emotions
- Desiring God – The Power of Admitting Weakness
- The Gospel Coalition – Real Men Cry
- Barna – Masculinity, Identity, and the Church
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.
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#anxietyInChristianMen #authenticChristianMan #avoidingCounselingInMarriage #brokenheartedChristianMen #ChristianAuthenticity #ChristianBlogForMen #christianBlogSeriesForMen #christianFictionForMen #christianHusbandIssues #ChristianManStruggles #christianMarriageProblems #ChristianMasculinity #christianMenAndAnxiety #christianMenAndBrotherhood #christianMenAndCounseling #christianMenAndDepression #christianMenAndEmotions #christianMenAndPride #christianMenMentalHealth #christianMenSmallGroup #christianPornAddictionStory #ChristianPornStruggle #ChristianStorytellingForMen #churchCultureAndMasculinity #crushedInSpirit #doubleLifeChristianMan #emotionalIntimacyInMarriage #emotionallyDistantHusband #emotionallyNumbChristian #emotionallyUnavailableHusband #faithAndEmotionalHonesty #faithAndMentalHealth #fearOfExposingWeakness #fearOfVulnerability #godAndMaleWeakness #godCloseToTheBrokenhearted #grittyChristianStory #hidingBehindStrength #howHidingWeaknessHarmsMarriage #internalizedBeAMan #lordIsCloseToTheBrokenhearted #maleEmotionalRepression #maleFearOfShame #menAndVulnerability #menHidingWeakness #menSGroupHonesty #menSMinistryResources #psalm3418Meaning #rawChristianTestimonyStyle #realChristianManhood #realStrugglesChristianMenFace #secretSinChristian #silentSufferingMen #stopCryingBeAMan #strongButLonelyMan #toxicMasculinityInChurch #vulnerabilityInMarriage -
The Loneliness of Men: When Strength Becomes Struggle
We often speak of male toxicity as a women’s issue, and it is, deeply. But there’s another truth that rarely makes headlines: the same culture that teaches men to dominate also teaches them to suffer in silence. The same system that devalues women’s emotions denies men their own.
Behind the facade of strength, many men are collapsing. They just don’t know how to ask for help.
The quiet epidemic
There’s a silent epidemic unfolding around us, and it isn’t a virus or an economic downturn. It’s the growing loneliness of men.
For generations, men were raised to believe that strength meant self-containment. That showing emotion was weakness. That love must be earned, never requested. But in a world where women are no longer willing to mother their partners, and relationships demand emotional maturity, this old definition of manhood has turned into a curse.
Men have long tied their sense of worth to being protectors and providers. When they lose a partner, marriage, or the daily reinforcement of family roles, many feel stripped of purpose. What follows is often quiet shame, isolation, and social withdrawal. Control and social acceptance matter more than emotional connection because, for them, power feels safer than vulnerability.
Across cities, from Bengaluru to Boston, men are lonely, deeply, chronically, and silently. They have careers, cars, dating apps, and gym memberships. Yet, when night falls, they have no one to come home to.
The collapse of connection
Studies have begun calling it what it is: a loneliness epidemic.
A 2023 report by the Harvard Study of Adult Development found that men in their 30s and 40s are far less likely than women to maintain deep friendships. The same pattern repeats in India, where male friendships often revolve around alcohol, work, or shared complaints, never vulnerability. Surveys show that men are significantly less likely to seek therapy, counselling, admit depression, or confide in peers.The data is grim too. According to a report
- 40% men meet the screening standards for depressive symptoms
- 44% experience suicidal ideation
- Men are nearly four times more likely than women to commit suicide, accounting for nearly 80% of all suicides
- 15% of men claim that they have no close friends
This data only underscores a painful truth, most men don’t have the language for loneliness. They are fluent in distraction, not dialogue. They cope with silence through screens, casual sex, or aggression, anything to numb the ache.
But loneliness doesn’t vanish when ignored; it mutates. It becomes irritability, anxiety, addiction, control. It shows up as cruelty toward others or self-destruction toward oneself. The men who seem most in control often carry the deepest emotional decay underneath.
Women are choosing peace
For decades, women were taught to absorb male dysfunction, to understand, forgive, and manage. But that era is ending. More women are choosing peace over chaos.
When women walk away from toxic partners, they don’t just leave a relationship, they strip these men of their only claim to significance. Without control, family, or a partner to dominate, many men confront an identity crisis they were never taught to survive.
In India, divorce petitions filed by women have risen sharply over the past decade. In many Indian cities, lawyers report a growing trend: women leaving not for infidelity, but for emotional neglect. They are done being therapists in disguise.
A marriage or relationship that drains your energy, triggers anxiety, and forces you to constantly prove your worth is no longer seen as sacred, it’s seen as unhealthy.
This shift is shaking the foundations of traditional masculinity. Men who grew up believing that love meant obedience and permanence now face rejection not as punishment, but as consequence. And most don’t know how to handle it.
The unspoken trauma of rejection
Rejection has become one of the most destabilizing forces in modern male psychology.
When women leave, many men don’t process it as loss, they experience it as humiliation. Conditioned to see themselves as protectors and providers, they interpret women’s independence as betrayal.
That’s why heartbreak among men so often turns into rage or withdrawal. The inability to sit with pain, to name it, to feel it, becomes the breeding ground for violence, self-harm, or depression.
In India, NCRB data consistently shows that men account for nearly 70% of suicides each year. Many of these are driven by relationship failure, unemployment, or family conflict. But at the core lies emotional illiteracy, the inability to regulate pain without collapsing into despair.
We don’t teach boys to be rejected with dignity. We teach them to win, or to disappear.
The new masculine crisis
We are living through a social transformation where women are learning to heal, while men refuse to grow. Women are investing in therapy, boundaries, and community. Men, meanwhile, are defending a version of masculinity that no longer fits the world.
This is why the loneliness epidemic among men is not accidental, it’s systemic.
When women stopped choosing suffering, men lost the only emotional outlet they ever had. For generations, women were the therapists, the peacemakers, the emotional translators. Now that they’ve stepped back, men are being forced to face themselves, and most don’t like what they see.
What happens if we don’t
Patriarchy was never a gift to men. It was a prison with a larger cell.
It taught them power but stole their peace. It gave them dominance but denied them connection. It promised them respect but left them unloved. Male toxicity doesn’t just destroy women’s safety. It destroys men’s souls.Men are, in many ways, the worst victims of patriarchy today, not because they’re oppressed, but because they’re imprisoned by the very system built to privilege them. Women have grown wiser, bolder, and freer, learning to step out of the blast zone. But patriarchy, like a guided missile, always needs a target. When it can’t strike women, it turns inward, and hits the men who uphold it, wounding them with loneliness, anger, and the quiet ache of a life unlived.
Breaking the silence
It’s time for men to start seeing the women in their lives not as extensions of their identity, but as individuals with inner worlds as complex and sacred as their own. This begins with unlearning the idea that control equals love.
Allow yourself to feel, to love deeply, to be vulnerable, to surrender without fear of losing power. Emotional openness isn’t weakness; it’s the only way to build relationships that are real. Seek help, without guilt or shame, and remember that therapy, friendship, and tenderness are not radical acts, they are the essence of being human.
Because the truth is this: men are not broken by weakness. They are broken by the burden of pretending they have none.
Also read:
Male Toxicity: The Unspoken Epidemic of Our Times
The Rise of Emotionally Fatigued, Hyper-Independent Women
Raising Independent, Self-Reliant, Emotionally Secure Children
#emotionalConnection #emotionalIlliteracy #genderInequality #genderReform #genderRoles #identityCrisis #lonelinessEpidemic #maleLoneliness #masculinityCrisis #mensMentalHealth #modernRelationships #patriarchy #relationships #societalExpectations #toxicMasculinity #womenEmpowerment
-
The Loneliness of Men: When Strength Becomes Struggle
We often speak of male toxicity as a women’s issue, and it is, deeply. But there’s another truth that rarely makes headlines: the same culture that teaches men to dominate also teaches them to suffer in silence. The same system that devalues women’s emotions denies men their own.
Behind the facade of strength, many men are collapsing. They just don’t know how to ask for help.
The quiet epidemic
There’s a silent epidemic unfolding around us, and it isn’t a virus or an economic downturn. It’s the growing loneliness of men.
For generations, men were raised to believe that strength meant self-containment. That showing emotion was weakness. That love must be earned, never requested. But in a world where women are no longer willing to mother their partners, and relationships demand emotional maturity, this old definition of manhood has turned into a curse.
Men have long tied their sense of worth to being protectors and providers. When they lose a partner, marriage, or the daily reinforcement of family roles, many feel stripped of purpose. What follows is often quiet shame, isolation, and social withdrawal. Control and social acceptance matter more than emotional connection because, for them, power feels safer than vulnerability.
Across cities, from Bengaluru to Boston, men are lonely, deeply, chronically, and silently. They have careers, cars, dating apps, and gym memberships. Yet, when night falls, they have no one to come home to.
The collapse of connection
Studies have begun calling it what it is: a loneliness epidemic.
A 2023 report by the Harvard Study of Adult Development found that men in their 30s and 40s are far less likely than women to maintain deep friendships. The same pattern repeats in India, where male friendships often revolve around alcohol, work, or shared complaints, never vulnerability. Surveys show that men are significantly less likely to seek therapy, counselling, admit depression, or confide in peers.The data is grim too. According to a report
- 40% men meet the screening standards for depressive symptoms
- 44% experience suicidal ideation
- Men are nearly four times more likely than women to commit suicide, accounting for nearly 80% of all suicides
- 15% of men claim that they have no close friends
This data only underscores a painful truth, most men don’t have the language for loneliness. They are fluent in distraction, not dialogue. They cope with silence through screens, casual sex, or aggression, anything to numb the ache.
But loneliness doesn’t vanish when ignored; it mutates. It becomes irritability, anxiety, addiction, control. It shows up as cruelty toward others or self-destruction toward oneself. The men who seem most in control often carry the deepest emotional decay underneath.
Women are choosing peace
For decades, women were taught to absorb male dysfunction, to understand, forgive, and manage. But that era is ending. More women are choosing peace over chaos.
When women walk away from toxic partners, they don’t just leave a relationship, they strip these men of their only claim to significance. Without control, family, or a partner to dominate, many men confront an identity crisis they were never taught to survive.
In India, divorce petitions filed by women have risen sharply over the past decade. In many Indian cities, lawyers report a growing trend: women leaving not for infidelity, but for emotional neglect. They are done being therapists in disguise.
A marriage or relationship that drains your energy, triggers anxiety, and forces you to constantly prove your worth is no longer seen as sacred, it’s seen as unhealthy.
This shift is shaking the foundations of traditional masculinity. Men who grew up believing that love meant obedience and permanence now face rejection not as punishment, but as consequence. And most don’t know how to handle it.
The unspoken trauma of rejection
Rejection has become one of the most destabilizing forces in modern male psychology.
When women leave, many men don’t process it as loss, they experience it as humiliation. Conditioned to see themselves as protectors and providers, they interpret women’s independence as betrayal.
That’s why heartbreak among men so often turns into rage or withdrawal. The inability to sit with pain, to name it, to feel it, becomes the breeding ground for violence, self-harm, or depression.
In India, NCRB data consistently shows that men account for nearly 70% of suicides each year. Many of these are driven by relationship failure, unemployment, or family conflict. But at the core lies emotional illiteracy, the inability to regulate pain without collapsing into despair.
We don’t teach boys to be rejected with dignity. We teach them to win, or to disappear.
The new masculine crisis
We are living through a social transformation where women are learning to heal, while men refuse to grow. Women are investing in therapy, boundaries, and community. Men, meanwhile, are defending a version of masculinity that no longer fits the world.
This is why the loneliness epidemic among men is not accidental, it’s systemic.
When women stopped choosing suffering, men lost the only emotional outlet they ever had. For generations, women were the therapists, the peacemakers, the emotional translators. Now that they’ve stepped back, men are being forced to face themselves, and most don’t like what they see.
What happens if we don’t
Patriarchy was never a gift to men. It was a prison with a larger cell.
It taught them power but stole their peace. It gave them dominance but denied them connection. It promised them respect but left them unloved. Male toxicity doesn’t just destroy women’s safety. It destroys men’s souls.Men are, in many ways, the worst victims of patriarchy today, not because they’re oppressed, but because they’re imprisoned by the very system built to privilege them. Women have grown wiser, bolder, and freer, learning to step out of the blast zone. But patriarchy, like a guided missile, always needs a target. When it can’t strike women, it turns inward, and hits the men who uphold it, wounding them with loneliness, anger, and the quiet ache of a life unlived.
Breaking the silence
It’s time for men to start seeing the women in their lives not as extensions of their identity, but as individuals with inner worlds as complex and sacred as their own. This begins with unlearning the idea that control equals love.
Allow yourself to feel, to love deeply, to be vulnerable, to surrender without fear of losing power. Emotional openness isn’t weakness; it’s the only way to build relationships that are real. Seek help, without guilt or shame, and remember that therapy, friendship, and tenderness are not radical acts, they are the essence of being human.
Because the truth is this: men are not broken by weakness. They are broken by the burden of pretending they have none.
Also read:
Male Toxicity: The Unspoken Epidemic of Our Times
The Rise of Emotionally Fatigued, Hyper-Independent Women
Raising Independent, Self-Reliant, Emotionally Secure Children
#emotionalConnection #emotionalIlliteracy #genderInequality #genderReform #genderRoles #identityCrisis #lonelinessEpidemic #maleLoneliness #masculinityCrisis #menSMentalHealth #modernRelationships #patriarchy #Relationships #societalExpectations #toxicMasculinity #womenEmpowerment
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Luther, peering at Psalm 14, says the real atheist isn’t the loud one but the numb one: the person who neither expects good from God nor seeks Him, and so grows hard, joyless, and oddly hostile—more inclined to wound than to help.
Now, if you look around and see people campaigning against kindness itself, that doesn’t exactly refute Luther.
So—how do you actually dwell on God’s goodness until it softens you?
#lutheran #holiness #growth #empathy #kindness #virtue #lcms -
"This was the Sovereign of Canada, speaking in defence of his realm. He was not merely asserting Canada’s sovereignty, in the face of repeated attempts to undermine and indeed mock it by (we have become numb to the enormity of this) the President of the United States. He was, by virtue of who he is and what he represents, reminding us of what it is based on."