This One's For You

A few nights ago, as I was trying to ward off my usual episode of insomnia, I found myself watching what essentially is stand-up poetry. Apparently it seems to be something that is aired quite often on HBO and I've just not run into it yet, or maybe I have and just never gave it a chance to catch my attention. Either way, I found it to be really quite moving.

The first act is what really stuck with me. The poet was a young guy, and as you listened to him recite his poetry it became evident that he was talking about love, heartache, and unfortunately things that we discredit men as capable of feeling.

I'm not going to deny my tendency to "man-bash" at times. But really when it comes right down to it, women can be just as awful as men. In fact I have seen some really respectable women (or at least women who I'd always viewed as respectable and honest), break a man's heart worse then I'd ever seen a man do to a woman. And the worst part is that it never really phased them. They walked away and continued to live their life as if he had never been a part of their life at all.

Point and case, this rather young, male poet stood in front of an audience and in plain English informed all the foolish men and women on this earth that men suffer too. Men feel pain just as strongly as women. Men can cry themselves to sleep at night just the same as your local Suzie Bag o' Donuts. Men have hearts. Men feel pain and heartache. They just have their own unique way of showing it.

The whole experience was really almost an epiphany for me, although I know that somewhere inside myself I knew that men can love and suffer just the same as a woman. But as with anything written out of passion, it just touched me in a different way. It was beautiful and powerful and almost heartbreaking in and of itself.

So for all the men out there, this one's for you!