this is what it sounds like when dads cry

Sad Dad, Mad Dad, and the headbangers bawl

My Father's Camry Filled with Leaves by Neil Goldberg

I slammed my head into the wall behind me. 

Well, not the wall exactly – the door jamb, which was worse, better, and, ultimately, neither. 

Worse because it hurt more, 
better because that bigger hurt would, I was sure, help replace the numbing dreadrage I was feeling already, and
neither because it didn’t help at all. 

At least not for long.

The cliche-ass flash of white light lasted not even a second and then I was back, drowning in the boiling hot water overflowing my brain into my body into the room containing not only the door jamb but also two screaming children, who were, in fact, mine. 

Contact with the jamb had broken the damb and now I was crying. Or, to be specific, trying to cry.

Unlike the operatic sobs of my three year old son Wilder or the proof of existence big cat screeches of baby Emma June — my cry was a trickle, the pipes in my stomach and throat all knotted up, old and rusty from lack of use, clogged.

But the idea of tears was there. Whimpering, hand over my eyes like I’d just been given some bad news and had to take off my glasses to process it, and finally, what’s this? A few drip drops of actual water.

But instead of really feeling my feelings, I got distracted thinking about how I wanted Wilder to see me crying so he’d know how much pain I was in and maybe stop being such a shithead but he didn’t really notice and by then I’d mostly felt shame about wanting to manipulate a three-year-old with my tears and -

“What’s wrong dada??” he asked.

Damn it, I’d gotten what I wanted. He noticed and I felt double-shame.  

“I’m frustrated,” I cry-said. 

He paused a second, then: “it’s okay to be frustrated.”

Well played, little man. The student had become the teacher, throwing back at me what Lauren and I had been saying during his inconsolable tantrums.

He’d entered a new phase yet again – always, with the new phases – an echo of a former phase, but stronger. Self-assured as he himself became himself, a particular person in a particular place and time whose daily activities included but were not limited to throwing large trash trucks at his sister, tasmanian devil whirling through piles of folded laundry, hitting us, hard, getting his face incredibly close to Emma June and screaming as loud as he could, and – here’s the kicker – not listening to us at all when we told him to please stop doing any of those things. 

An hour earlier, for the hundredth time that day, Wilder was doing all of the above when I walked into the living room. Lauren had been with the kids for a while, so I offered to take them to the playground.

But Wilder refused, so I said I’d move his body (a classic ‘gentle parenting’ trick that never feels all that gentle), but he slipped out of my grip like a lil eel with legs, squirming now all over the house.

Lauren suggested he just stay and play, which was frustrating because I knew – I knew – he’d soon be a monster again and Lauren, who will take the pin out of a grenade and eat it just to make sure that no one else would get hurt and say “yummy” afterwards so no one worries about her, she will once again be a hero who puts herself last. 

But maybe she was right, so I sat down with him and as he looked up at me, those big eyes full of innocent wonder, he chucked a magnet tile at my head. 

And that’s when I took him to his room with Emma June and sat in front of the door. We’d play in here and give mama a break.

Wilder didn’t like that one bit and lets out the high pitched scream of someone who’d just seen a murder or a spider or both.

He stared me down too and let it rip like he was testing not just my limits but his own: how big can I take this? How much can you handle? Not much, it turned out.

Disassociate is a word I see thrown around a lot. Maybe that’s what happened? I got sorta quiet and stared out into space? One can only do that for so long until some other part of you – the one who wants to associate – screams and breaks the glass and slams your head back into the wall which turns out to be the door jamb and here come the waterworks. 

cheesesweats 

As a teen, I used to think doing stuff like that – hitting my desk chair, slamming my door – was cool. Or manly, maybe? I don’t know. As an adult, I’d do it less but fantasize about doing it more, imagining my head slamming into the keyboard or taking the keyboard and smashing the computer to bits, Office Space fax machine style.

Sometimes it’d all be too much and I’d actually hit my own head really hard with my open palm, like stupid stupid stupid, like that pain would feel better than whatever else I was feeling. Or at least I’d be in control of it.

It didn’t, and I wasn’t, but I would always feel vindicated afterwards, like “See, I am fucked up. Why else would I do something like that?”

Which makes sense given how little physical proof there is of mental illness otherwise. When you break your arm, an X-ray shows a broken arm. When you get depressed and anxious and overwhelmed, you can say to people that you are depressed and anxious and overwhelmed but they have no way of knowing, not really. There’s no proof.

Sometimes I wish there were physical symptoms, like when you got anxious, you’d start sweating cheese. Not a lot of cheese, and not a smelly one either so you’d still be able to hang out without making things weird, but enough that other people would be like ”Hey man you’re sweating a lot of cheddar right now. Are you ok?” 

But in lieu of the cheesesweats, we have the head bangs. 

Lauren came into the room and saw me crying.

I tried saying “Idon’tknowI’mjustoverwhelmedit’stoomuch” but through the whimpers it sounded like the wails of an almost out of batteries emergency truck toy.

this is what it sounds like

Realizing she once again has three children to care for, Lauren took over.

I left the room, sat on the living room couch, and really let it rip, devil may care and devil did cry, no holding back, all the knots now unknotted, a blubbering release of all the stuff I’d been holding so tightly to like I’d been this ball of dried up play-doh of all different colors all mixed together, slammbing my head back into the door jamb and cracking me open to reveal that it was not play-doh inside me but gigantic wet feelings of sadrage and overwhelmed joy and so many others I’d decided to protect myself from by simply not feeling them at all until of course I did.

Because you always do. 

Sitting there, I remembered standing in my childhood room, fifteen years old, fighting with my dad. There he was, by the door, as I screamed at him and mocked him and said nothing at all when all he wanted was for me to say something.

I’d never seen him cry before, but here it was. Here he was, shaking a little, unable to do anything but let the tears come because there was nothing else he could do. 

Sometimes there’s not. 

We got through that fight just like we got through all the others, like the time we were in the kitchen and I got so mad I punched a banana that was on the counter. It exploded and went everywhere all over me and the walls. We laughed, but not in a cathartic–all-is-great-now-way. Still, the anger was there, probably even more so for my parents who cleaned up the banana because they did not trust me to do it correctly. 

In lieu of cheesesweats, we punch bananas. 

stay hard?

I’ve been crying a lot lately, especially to motivational speech compilations on YouTube when I’m working out. It’s impossible not to, though whenever David Goggins screams his catchphrase '‘stay hard’ I’m immediately taken out of it.

Besides being a perfect slogan for Viagra Cialis etc, the phrase is manhood epitomized - stay hard, do not let up, do not break. But one can only stay hard for so long. Eventually, one must go soft I am so sorry for this idk why it’s in here either.

One thing they’ll often say in the videos is “pain is weakness leaving the body.” Sounds like some agro bullshit.

Pain isn’t weakness leaving the body, but maybe anger is fear that get stuck in there.

Crying, then, is anger leaving the body.

Crying is the human body’s cheesesweats. 

And not just crying. All emotions. 

The first thing Emma June did when she joined this world was cry. Well actually, she looked around a while and the doctors were like,”‘Um baby you need to cry.” and then I whispered, “you don’t have to stay hard.” and she cried. 

The next thing she did, a few months later, was laugh. Well before walking or crawling or talking or anything else, she laughed. 

Hours later

And all is well. Wilder and I are playing hide and seek. I am laying on the ground, counting, the goose egg on the back of my head expanding into the floor, hurting.

“Ready or not, here I come,” I say, standing up, and right away he screams from behind the dining room chair, “Here I am!”

To say this is the wrong way to play misses the point. In his mind, hide and seek is a game where you hide and almost immediately reveal where you have hidden so that the other person can find you and joy can be had by all. 

Here I am!

That was a week ago. Since then, he’s gotten much better at hiding. Three days ago, he stuck himself head first into the bottom part of the stroller, his undie’d butt hanging out for the world to see. Yesterday he hid under our bed, stone cold unmoving, for at least ten minutes before I found him. This morning, he locked himself in my office which was too far, but how would he know that?

He is learning to hide, like all of us do, myself very much included.

There’s a growing chorus of voices around the ideas of “mom rage,” the anger women feel from shouldering too much of the parental burden while also being expected to work and live and smile! etc (there are a lot of amazing writers on Substack like

Rachel Katz

,

Amanda Montei

and

Erin Ryan

among so so many others).

But talking about dad rage, even using that phrase, feels like way too much, shameful because underneath Mad Dad, which is really Sad DAd (TM) is a global history of violence and abuse that spans oh, idk, all of recorded history.

Then there’s the shame of being a white male in a society for whom privilege rains down. “Oh you’re gonna complain? Everyone else has it worse you dipshitsack stop it,” I imagine the world saying.

Three shames don’t make anything right. It helps no one to keep this in, and sharing it might help people including perhaps most importantly my son.

I want him to know that though I am broken like we’re all broken, play-doh husks full of wet tears, each of us a mixed metaphor that makes as little sense as we do, I will always try to talk to him about it, to shed shame and make everything from Sad Dad to Mad Son okay. Allowed.

“It’s okay to hide”, I want to tell him, “but it’s okay to come out too and scream ‘here I am!’ To go soft and punch bananas and sweat cheese.”

“But it isn’t okay to hurt your body or anyone else,” I’ll add. “Trust me, I know.”

“But the feelings? Let em rip. Crying and laughing both, they are exhalations. A soul’s release of breath. Whatever is in can finally come out.”

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let’s maybe talk about it?

This is hard to talk about but important so let’s give it a shot? don’t be dicks or I’ll sick the Alex Dobrenko impersonators on you

No specific questions besides maybe this - dads and also moms and really all people - how do you deal with anger and other overwhelming emotions? and how do you talk about those emotions with the people you love?