I don't really know if it's possible for masculinity to be defined in any sort of meaningful way and I think any attempt to do so will alienate people. I know there are personal interpretations of what masculinity is to people and what is attractive about masculinity to people that I personally don't really feel I fit into, particularly definitions that center around strength or power. It's clichéd to say that being yourself is the most attractive thing you could be but I also think it's kind of true. Anyway, all of this is to say, this post makes sense to me and those feelings make sense.

i'm not much for labels & standards myself, hence the any. but my life oscillates between being myself ~ wondering if everyone hates me. by now i know the conclusion is that i would also hate myself (more) if i tried to be more attractive to others instead of doing my own thing, though!

For what it's worth I think you have a delightful sense of humor, and I appreciate the ways that you like... talk so earnestly about the things that matter to you? *points at your pinned post* And your drive to make sense of who you are, what matters to you, and why, despite everything weighing on you.

More broadly, I'm just thinking about a conversation I had with Bast a while ago. I asked him why he loved me; he said he just did. I talked about the reasons I loved various people; he asked me if those really were the reasons I loved those people, or whether they were just the reasons I was finding to explain my love after the fact to other people. And I feel like, obv there's love and there's attraction, but I feel like attraction operates on something similar, where we can sit down and attempt to name all these things we find attractive and all these reasons we find someone attractive, but at the end of the day, these are just... simplifications. At the end of the day, we are attracted to people and we love people just because they are themselves - the only themselves in the whole world.

And like, when we talk about masculinity, when we talk about things that we find attractive in other people, those are abstractions in themselves. They are ideals, and therefore, impossible and unreal. No one will ever be able to totally strong all the time for someone else, no one will be forever patient and understanding, no one will know how to fix every plumbing issue. We may strive towards our ideals, but we will never totally embody them.

And that's fine, actually. Relationships are built on vulnerability, and there's no room for vulnerability in a relationship with an ideal being. There are people I've loved not despite but because they were a little too sharp and a little too raw for the world at large - there are people who've loved me for the same reason. There was just... an unspeakable, beautiful something about the connections we made in the context of that. It's tricky, because there were times where we hurt each other with our sharpness and rawness in ways that were not beautiful, but then there were the times where we learned to be without hurting each other and without hiding ourselves, and, idk. It's a tricky, delicate thing to put into words, and I've already accidentally an essay in your comments.