Dealing with my own stuff is difficult and draining. I get fatigued of swallowing and pushing through it in order to make space for and cater to others. People who take up excessive amounts of space, who force everyone else to deal with their character flaws and troubles with seemingly zero awareness and zero effort on improving drive me nuts. So, I really hate dealing with other people’s uninhibited abnormalities and having to be incredibly compassionate and inconvenienced by their life stress. It always seems entitled.
Maybe I’m just upset about the lack of reciprocity. The world doesn't take a knee for me when I need a moment so I get frustrated when the game has to stop for others. Maybe that’s my own fault for not ever broadcasting my own shit (until now). I wasn’t really raised to do so. Growing up I participated in a lot of community/team based activities. The group/team was far more important than personal/individual stuff. Very ant colony & bee hive stuff.
Plus, as it is said by the faceless mass we call They, men are not socialized to have great emotional intelligence. I often struggle to find words. Add that to the intensity of my emotions and that's just a recipe for crappy expression. Being Black/Brown cishet man, I have to pay extra attention to which emotions are expressed and to what degree. It is my experience that we don’t get the same allowances or the same reactions. There's a documentary about this I think. The Mask You Live In (Check the Trailer) Implicit bias says that I am already seen as innately menacing. A reasonable amount of anger could still get me arrested or shot. And despite what your progressive social media circles may tell you, ain't nobody got time for Brown boy melancholy. "Toxic masculinity" abounds.
It’d be nice if everyone defaulted to putting the needs of the whole over their own. But, when we experience scarcity and are living with survival mindsets, it’s every (wo)man for her/himself. Blame individualistic western culture maybe? Maybe it's how small and rigidly we define family. Being the last one holding onto community values really just leaves you left out. The tragedy of the commons I believe is what it’s called. Scarcity of care.
So, you learn to aggressively and unapologetically take space despite how it affects everyone and everything around you because it’s often not given and you'd otherwise self destruct. And you learn to limit when and how much you can give a damn about other people and other things.
So, I know that I'll push through things somehow because I've always had to. I'm still here. I credit the slave resilience and grit running through my veins.