Thread by @tante

(Usually this is kind of a very distanced, pseudo-intellectual blabla channel, but this is slightly different. Just ignore it if you are here for the blabla)

With a new year often come resolutions. And I do have those. Like, I want to write more on my blog for example. There's a lot of work stuff that I want to do. I plan to run the Berlin marathon again, etc. etc. Boring stuff.

But there are things that are maybe a little atypical. And these things are not "resolutions" as such but ... I don't know the right nomenclature or concepts really.

People who meet me find that I am very different in person that I am here. More polite, friendlier for example. It actually surprises people. I mean the dirty commie is in there, sure but I present myself differently.

That is not super unusual. This medium is extremely performative - like most if not all of social media. But after doing therapy for literally years now it has become obvious how massively things need to change.

Here's a fun fact. Because of the way I was raised, the environment I grew up in, the way I am seen or think I am seen I've come to realize that I basically lost my 20ies and 30ies.

And this sounds super midlife crisy but it's not about finding a younger partner or getting an earring or a motorcycle.

Because of "how men are (supposed to be)" and because of coming up in an environment of "emotional analphabets" and people with a lot of trauma and experiences of poverty and worthlessness I was never able to see myself the way most people get to see themselves.

So - being the good little boy I am - I turned all the emotions I wasn't allowed to have or that were not responded to, turned all the generational trauma of worthlessness into anger. Because that is what men do. Be angry.

And while I do believe that - sometimes - anger is a gift, it gets draining.
The person most people meet when they meet me, the polite guy is as much a role as this angry middle aged white guy Twitter thing.

I basically cut my emotions out, grinded them down to anger and gave that a Twitter account, to keep my everyday self under control and "normal".

Now I get that performing one's own fucked-up-ness is a very social media thing to do but I do have a point. I think.

While I don't know exactly where I as a person am going or am going to end up at, understanding my own issues has made many of the non-individual causes of them very visible. Patterns that become hard to unsee.

It was an experience of abstract things becoming concrete things. I know that the patriarchy hurts men as well, but that was abstract. When it became concrete for me it was hard not to see it in others.

Not everybody has my psychological issues, everyone has their own battles to fight. And some things that feel like it might not even be battles (and boy is that a hard thing to parse for people socialized as men).

I am tired of seeing the men around me bleed (metaphorically). So all these weird navel-gazy tweets were mostly an encouragement to the men around me. To find happiness and joy even when the world feels like that's not possible.

Find friends who care about your feelings. Because facts don't just care about your feelings they are changed by them.

My resolution for this year is to find out who this *gestures around wildly* is and how to make it happy.

I hope that you find ways to be happier to. Even if you don't know how to get there - yet. I know that feeling. You can change it - maybe you just need some help.

God knows I did.

"When you can't run anymore you crawl. And when you can't do that you find someone to carry you."

(This super should have been a blog post but I am to lazy to copy this thread that I wanted to just be like 3 or four tweets over. Great job on the resolutions @tante. Gold star.)