After a deep convo with the men in my life here goes something…

“The male ego is fragile.”

But fragility isn’t always what people think it is.

And somewhere in all the pressure and silence, there’s always a ‘Tommy’ the version of a man society tells him he should be, quietly waiting to show up in his life.

A man’s ego is often tied to his sense of self worth, and that worth is shaped by society’s expectations of strength, control, and status. 

From a young age many men are taught that their value lies in what they can provide, how much they can endure, and how little they complain.

I barely woke up this morning and two of my friends texted me asking if I included their perspectives in my blog. I told them I already had… but here I am. A day after celebrating women.

It’s been no secret lately that I’ve been obsessing over the male perspective. Not causeeee I’m a pick me.

Two things pushed me their.

First, the facts. Black and Brown men are experiencing rising mental health struggles, yet they remain among the least likely groups to seek therapy or receive consistent mental health support.

The second reason came during my 31 for 31 giveback.

I was walking, handing out bags of essentials and the amount of homeless men I saw surprised me.

It was code blue outside.

Had anyone called for them? Or was there simply not enough space? My best friend explained that homeless men are the last ones on lines for beds during emergencies. She has worked in this industry for years.

These weren’t just strangers. When you look closely, they start to look familiar. They looked like uncles, fathers, older brothers… sons who simply aged into a world that forgot them.

Men make up nearly 70 percent of the homeless population in the United States. 

Many of them carry history of childhood trauma, incarceration, untreated mental illness, addiction, or broken family systems.

Standing there in the cold, I kept thinking the same thing over and over again…

These men were once boys.

Someone once held them, someone once had hopes for them.

And somehow, somewhere along the way, life got heavy.

Later that day I was sitting with a few colleagues and to my surprise the conversation was centered around fatherhood. The roles men fight so hard to hold on to… and the quiet fear of what happens when someone else steps into them.

But for a moment I got lost in my own thoughts.

I thought about Arnow Avenue. I thought about Papi Fernando.

I thought about what I’ve learned in recent years.

In my eyes, he always came around to show us a good time. But I also learned in therapy that memories can be implanted in your brain! Sick.

I grew up with two dads… sort of.

One died very early on, but I still have vivid memories of him being around. The other my biological father, my greatest love, has a tremendous amount of trauma and is currently incarcerated, something I’ve explained in many of my blogs.

And sometimes I wonder

“Why did my mom protect us so much from the bad?”

She painted them as decent fathers.

Maybe she understood something about men before I did.

When I think about men, the first words that come to mind are protector, king, leader, father, son… human.

Because of my strong opinions about what it means to be a woman, people sometimes mistake that for a dislike of men.

Let me be very clear. I love men.

Sometimes I even envy them… until I actually sit down and talk to them.

Anyway, the men I was speaking with that day , According to them, they’re all stars in this realm of fatherhood. 

One of them quickly said he wouldn’t be happy if his coparent moved on. Without hesitation he added something that stuck with me.

“Women leave when they’re unhappy. Men stay no matter what.”

(This is a male perspective blog y’all.)

The other one  followed it with something even stronger. “ you imagine you calling your kid and you on FaceTime, let’s say they turn the camera and you see “Tommy” shirt off making your kid breakfast”

I was secretly starting to love Tommy.

“There’s no way Tommy could ever take my place.”

I started to think to myself that if the only reason you wouldn’t leave is because of Tommy, you gotta go within brother. 

My brother from another  started talking about domestic violence against men.

A topic that rarely gets discussed seriously.

Did you know that about one in three men in the United States experience some form of physical violence, emotional abuse, or control from an intimate partner during their lifetime? 

Yet men are significantly less likely to report abuse or seek help. 

For a man that is raised to believe he must always be the protector, admitting he is the one being harmed can feel like admitting failure.

So instead of naming it, they bury it.

But buried pain doesn’t disappear, it changes shape.

Sometimes it becomes anger (Those can sometimes look like the red pill guys, the guys sharing meme about how all women ain’t shit)
Sometimes distance.
Sometimes projection.

A man who once felt powerless inside a relationship may later become the man who struggles to trust anyone, the one who keeps people at arm’s length. The one who slowly pushes people away without realizing it.

And eventually ends up alone.

It’s not always because he wants to be alone, but because the world has taught him that vulnerability is dangerous.

There’s a saying that floats around the internet that stuck with me while writing this, that “many men receive their first flowers at their funeral”. It isn’t a perfect statistic, but the truth behind it is hard to ignore. majority of men have never received flowers at all, even though many say they would appreciate the gesture. By the time the flowers arrive, they can no longer smell them. I thought that was interesting, I once gifted a man a forever rose (he ain’t care but I did it).

A lot of this silence starts early.

About one in six boys experience sexual abuse before the age of eighteen, though many experts believe the number is higher because boys are far less likely to report it.

When boys do speak up, they are often dismissed, laughed at, or even congratulated if the abuser is a woman.

These boys grow up and become womanizers. 

Imagine carrying that confusion into adulthood. Trauma that is never processed doesn’t disappear, it adapts.

Some men cope through hypersexuality, constantly seeking validation through sex because somewhere along the line they learned that their value is tied to obtaining, possession and conquering. 

In our communities we often dap up the boy who “gets a lot of girls,” celebrating the behavior without asking where it might actually come from.

I be asking though. Tea time: one of my homeboys got head from a local addict because she had no teeth. Everyone laughed me on the other hand I asked every question imaginable.

Other men cope through control, jealousy, or emotional withdrawal.

Men cannot explore sexuality as openly as women do, that’s just a fact. Me and my friend sat there digesting the reason for this, I still haven’t come to the conclusion.

Boys who experience childhood abuse or neglect are significantly more likely to experience incarceration, unstable housing, and cycles of violence later in life.

Trauma changes how the brain responds to stress, trust, and conflict.

So when I think back to those men outside during my walk, standing in the cold while the rest of the city rushed past them, I don’t just see homelessness.

I see stories that were never fully heard.

Men who may have spent their entire lives being told to tough it out. Men who were taught that their worth depended on what they could provide rather than how they felt.

I asked a few of the men in my life a simple question.

“If there’s one thing you would want the world to know about being a man, what would it be?”

One of my favorite case studies is a multilayered man. He’s incredibly deep, though on the surface you might never guess it.

He told me:

“We raise better households than everyone else… and it’s not taking a shot at anybody. It’s just showing how we needed way more than we were given credit for and way more than they allowed us to have.”

Another man said something brutally honest.

“Nobody truly cares about your feelings or excuses. Just get the job done.”

Another responded

“That I’m human too we carry so much shit with us that if we complain we are label as weak”

It reminded me of a conversation with an old lover who once told me that even when he explained himself, his reasons sounded like excuses.

And then there was a man in which I truly admire for his dedication to his family.

He said something that stayed with me the most.

“Being a man is learning to die to yourself so the people you love can live better.”

And maybe that’s where Tommy comes in.

Because Tommy isn’t always a real person.

Sometimes Tommy is just the idea of another man or the man you crave to be. The man who stayed strong, who didn’t break, who carried less baggage.

But Tommy isn’t better.

Tommy is the man who chose to go against the grain. The man who walked away from pain instead of carrying it forever. The man who chose happiness, even when it looked like failure to the world.

Tommy is in all of us. He’s the mirror, the possibility, the reminder that even broken men can make choices that honor themselves.

And maybe the real tragedy isn’t that Tommy exists. It’s that so many men are fighting him , fighting themselves alone, instead of seeing that choosing joy is also a form of strength.

Let me go find Tommy.