Some men walk the chaos & keep the calm but don’t walk out the other side. It could be considered their women failed to hold them to the depths, to save them at the end. 🕉️
thank you for reading + taking the time to sit with it.
i agree with the first part — some men do walk through chaos carrying calm that costs them everything. where i’d gently push back is the idea of being “saved” at the end. i don’t think it’s a woman’s job to save a man. i think the rare ones know how to *hold* him while he saves himself — by giving him space to breathe, not another role to perform.
exactly. fixing feels active, supportive feels quiet — and quiet is harder for most people. support requires restraint, trust, and the ability to let someone move at their own pace without intervening to feel useful. that learning curve is real on both sides.
Feeling useful or feeling protective? Oh dear, another descriptive may be controlling…aagh think I just had a realisation. Thanks for the therapy session ☕️. I may drop by again sometime.
When you said you write to burn away lies you felt trapped in, I thought of Joan Didion, one of my writing heroes: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”
She wrote to make sense of herself and the world around her, and you are absolutely correct: nothing heals like pushing the words out and into the air.
Some men walk the chaos & keep the calm but don’t walk out the other side. It could be considered their women failed to hold them to the depths, to save them at the end. 🕉️
thank you for reading + taking the time to sit with it.
i agree with the first part — some men do walk through chaos carrying calm that costs them everything. where i’d gently push back is the idea of being “saved” at the end. i don’t think it’s a woman’s job to save a man. i think the rare ones know how to *hold* him while he saves himself — by giving him space to breathe, not another role to perform.
i appreciate you engaging with it at this depth.
— author
exactly. fixing feels active, supportive feels quiet — and quiet is harder for most people. support requires restraint, trust, and the ability to let someone move at their own pace without intervening to feel useful. that learning curve is real on both sides.
— author
Feeling useful or feeling protective? Oh dear, another descriptive may be controlling…aagh think I just had a realisation. Thanks for the therapy session ☕️. I may drop by again sometime.
Interesting perspective. Perhaps, like men, some women feel they need to fix rather than support. A learning process.
When you said you write to burn away lies you felt trapped in, I thought of Joan Didion, one of my writing heroes: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”
She wrote to make sense of herself and the world around her, and you are absolutely correct: nothing heals like pushing the words out and into the air.
This was her essay; Lit Hub is delicious.
https://lithub.com/joan-didion-why-i-write/
Can you hear my standing ovation? I will clap until my arms give out.
appreciate that.