a serenade of synchronicities
I think about masculine vulnerability all the time…
For the past couple of years, I’ve been developing this working theory that masculine energy vocalizes vulnerability in an entirely different way than feminine, just as feminine violence manifests in entirely different ways than masculine.
It all sounds very “yea, no, duh” when I write it out, but it’s taken me a really, really, long time to put this idea to words.
I’ve said this many times in the past: I am absolutely blessed to have deep, cherished, friendships with men. I’ve had friendships with men from all over the world, at various ages, various economic circumstances, and various degrees of selflessness to malintent. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand just how rare this reality is, and how easily it is to be misunderstood. Even here in Rio, the majority of my friends are men, at least the ones I see day-to-day. And all in incredibly mundane circumstances that are really full of spirit-nourishing moments.
Here are the two men that fate has brought into my path within Zona Sul:
(1) Circo is one of my beach friends. Circo is a 57 year old man who lives in Botafogo, but heads the Copacabana’s beach every (sunny) day to walk up and down the beach in the afternoon. We’ve actually met several times, synchronistically, on the beach that always felt like fate. Now, we meet once or twice a week to walk up and down the beach, sometimes all the way from Leme to Ipanema, and chit chat about various things. Circo doesn’t speak English, but he’s incredibly patient and generous with my level of Portuguese; it’s a part of my week that I truly love.
(2) Ricardo is absolutely a soul bond. Ricardo is a 64 year old man who lives on the same street as me, and we met at the local lancheria that we both go to (quasi todo dias). In the same way as Cisco, we just kept running into each other until there was a short hand friendship that quickly turned into frequently shared breakfasts. We meet and converse about spirituality, usually based on his past studies on spiritual concepts, or regarding whatever my obsession of the day is, and it’s equal parts soul-nourishing and mind-expanding. Ricardo picks up on energies like I do (he actually wrote a full book about it, which I’m currently reading through). Our conversations are also only in Portuguese, as well, but I do leverage the translate app a bit more since we have full on conversations about concepts that I spend most of my personal time diving into.
I find it curious, and also a cherished gift, that I get to interact with men irrespective of their age or background as equal friends. Do I worry about romantic feelings developing? Sometimes. A learned fear, unfortunately. I, myself, am very direct…. Maybe sometimes more direct than men typically like…. but I actually vocalize my interests pretty early on when I meet people. If I want to spend time, just as friends, I’ll say so. If I want to spent time together to get to know them and explore the possibilities, I’ll also say so; and, should I decide that I’d rather just be friends after all, I’ll say so, again. As it is, right now, as much as I try to be, I’m not that interested in dating…. At least not until someone comes along and gives me an “OH! Now, THAT energy is something of significance”. So, that makes it easy to keep a firm line that I’m just interested in friendship, I keep my male friendships to alcohol-free situations (and I chosen not to drink anymore, anyways), during the daytime, and in public places because there’s no risk of some outside factor damaging the balance of genuine companionship with another soul.
If I put it in the context of my own intuitive gifts, it’s like I can see and feel the inner pain of others, both in men and in women.
In regards to my ability to have male friendships, the reality is that the excessive ability to manifest this is related to my appearance. Even if my own opinion of my appearance oscillates between feeling myself and it "not being a mirror day”, I now accept that men like to look at all women, especially ones that smile at them. I have a smiled glued to my face in all emotions, so this has lead to… a lot of men approaching me with… hunger. Are these the men I befriend? Absolute fuck no. Those are the interactions that drain my entire day’s worth of social energy within 30 seconds (something I really need to work on… because hiding all day after is not the vibe…). And while appearance is part of it, at least initially, I do believe it’s my energy and understanding that moves the dynamic to friendship (again, for the non-energy vampires…).
I do have, and have had, female friends for specific chapters of life, but it’s only been recently that I’ve started to meet female friends that aren’t trying to compete with me, bring me down, or diminish my needs as a person. It’s truly such an odd experience to meet a new friend you think you vibe with, you feel kindred with, only to realize that they start either copying you (..so strange..), kind of treating you like a burden, or as an extra in their starring life show. Now, I have a lot of blindspots and my own share of subconscious limitations in this area that I won’t undervalue, but the consistent complications of female friendships had made me particularly weary of them, and most women aren’t exactly the most enthralled with me either…
It’s the discrepancy in the ways in which I’m approached, or received when I approach, that allows my intuitive gifts to shine, or mute/numb out. So, it might be from lack of practice/success with the feminine, or some innate skew that existed already, but I genuinely feel and hear masculine vulnerability far more clearly than feminine.
Which, in turn, is why I now understand just how fucking muted it has been by society, across the globe. Men truly, truly, pour their heart out to me. Not in an energy dumping kind of way (…unless they’re one of the energy vampires… or the men who low key want to eat me….), and it’s often times not even with words. It’s more about what is unsaid, but is equally understood within the context of the conversation. It’s the shared, empathetic, experience of the weight of chains wrapped tightly around their inner softness, carefully guarded in their day-to-day life, and almost entirely hidden from their romantic relationships. The more men I talk to, the more I learn how to really listen, the more I can see how muted this expression has been.
Currently, in society, there is a movement of women vocalizing the shameful expression of masculine toxicity. And it’s an incredibly necessary balancing energy of things that moved for too long in the accepted shadows…. but feminine toxicity has also thrived deep within the unsaid….. and it needs to be talked about, too. There are always, always, two sides to the same energy. We need to be honest about the invisible knifes of feminine violence, and its symbiotic relationship with masculine violence.
My best analogy of feminine toxicity is “Why would I need to bruise you when I can just remove your will to live?”. It’s the ability to say very, very, mundane things in front of others that are actually perfectly constructed, invisible, knives for the intended victim. And the victim is then expected to maintain a happy, loving, persona in front of others while casually bleeding out in an entirely unseen way. It’s like that scene in Gladiator when Commodus mortally wounds Maximus before the fight as he says, “Smile for me, brother.” Simple words, during an almost heart-felt conversation, but the delivery of a mortal wound was clear…. even though no one else would be able to see it.
I can say this with such confidence, with such an intimate depth of knowledge, because not only have I been the recipient of it, I’ve also been pretty Queen in inflicting it…. I know so much about feminine violence because I really took time to understand my own expression of it.
Remember how I said I can feel peoples emotions with them, and see where their inner most pain lies? I learned that I had this gift primarily by abusing it. Primarily by seeing just how sharp, and precise, my words could be in peak expressions of fear and defensiveness. It took me a long time to find the line where normal understanding ends and my gift began, and I ended up saying (or doing) things that were such a perfect, deadly, hit to the other person’s heart, it made me entirely unsafe for them to be around thereafter.
And, while, yes, there have been plenty of moments where we could argue it was justified (…I have pretty extensive experience with masculine violence as well, and my childhood was not exactly happy….), but that does not change the fact that I, myself, am quite skilled in feminine violence. My ignorance regarding my own perception didn’t change the fact that I said and did things that the recipients might never forget, or recover from, fully. And I might never know, because the wounds inflicted were so deep, I’m no longer invited to be a part of those people’s lives, anymore. There are some bridges that cannot be unburned, truly.
I actually think that was the very first shadow I started working on, in my early 20’s. Because, my gift is feeling emotions with others….so…. I was able to feel the true extent of pain I inflicted, in real time. Man, did I develop a deep victim shadow when I came to terms with the pain I was capable of inflicting, while simultaneously feeling rage and injustice for grievances inflicted against me. I struggled so deeply with this dichotomy, that it eventually broke me. It lead me to numb out certain parts of my essence, for years, because I was trying so hard to keep my darkness hidden deep within… where the only person it could hurt was me… Though, because I now had committed to self-hatred, I also made a lot of space and “forgiveness” for when others lost their shit on me. This mentality made me very, very, appealing to narcissists (you know, the clinical kind….) - and there was plenty of violence in those life chapters as well (though, fortunately, I do learn quick - these chapters were short-lived). No matter how small I tried to make myself, no matter how disempowered, our true essence always, always, shines through… darkness and all.
Now, let me preface that I go through life a bit quicker than most…. but I had had a fucking ‘nough of that shit by the time I reached my mid-20s. Between the years of 25-30, while I did have some epically dark experiences that really, intimately, showed me the toxic people I was choosing to surround myself with, I also had the ego-melting realization that I was only a victim to myself…. and my own fucking choices. It was during these couple of years, casually combined with a global pandemic and so much travel that I essentially didn’t have a fixed home for 4 years, that it lead to me finally deciding to straighten my crown, grab a flashlight, and dive into my darkness to either remove it, entirely….or somehow befriend it. (The tail-end of the death and rebirth cycle can be found here).
The odd thing about healing is that, once you take responsibility for the pain you are capable of inflicting, for the scars and damage that you can do with ease in peak expression of your unprocessed darkness, that’s also the moment that you can hear beyond the whispers of the pain and start to hear the laughter of The Inner Child. Because, then and only then, can you be a part of healing the pain you’ve perpetuated, instead of perpetuating more. I think that’s why I feel so called to work in that space, in the healing of feminine violence and the recognition and nurturing of masculine vulnerability, because no one can understand helping heal pain like one of the leading stars in inflicting it. ***
It’s actually a huge, beautiful, gift, to be able to hear and see the softness and inner joy of others. This is why I cherish all forms of genuine vulnerability so deeply; the more that we understand the inner-workings of our hearts, the more we see how much we actually have in common. When someone vulnerably shows us their Achille’s heel, and the most cherished parts of their inner world, and we respect, honor, and understand the magnitude of this, then we start to defend and nourish each other’s inner softness…. instead of exploiting it in defense of our own. I hope to embody this mentality through my own interactions with the ever-expanding list of those I cherish.
The call of the soul is such a lovely serenade of synchronicities ♡
***Now, I’m, personally, not a fan of healing with the people who hurt you / who you have hurt. To me, a burned bridge is a burned bridge. I feel this deadness of interest, inside, when I think about doing that work with “the faces of known abusers” to my inner child… or to theirs. I’m still in the start of my 30s, so my mind might change on this as I have more years of healing and expansion from my own abusers, but if I don’t want anything to do with them, I bet the ones I have abused with my feminine violence don’t want to fuck with me either. I’m very comfortable with this reality, at present, because that doesn’t mean we can’t heal with others, and help others heal. Because, we know the reality of what someone is talking about when they confide in past pain from someone who had a similar expression of violence to our own. It is our penance, our path to self-forgiveness, our path to freedom, to be a part of that healing process….Only if you feel called to that. I deeply do, as you can see and feel with my words. But don’t let me call you to action that’s not in your intuition to take. If it helps for context, you can think of this phrase as hearing me talk to me.