Tonight, I did the one thing every college student dreads, I said goodbye to the ones closest to me. Of course, college is an exciting new chapter in my life, but leaving behind so many good friends and memories is a very demanding task.
I noticed something weird as I said my final farewells to my male friends. None of us really knew how to do it. Obviously, saying goodbye is a pretty straightforward process. The challenge is accepting that it really is a goodbye.
As men, we're taught that emotions make us weak, so we shut them out. That left me and some of my closest friends EVER in this weird state where we stood around and made jokes while I inched towards my car.
Why was it such an awkward moment for us? Because as men, we need to feel strong and we need our peers to see us that way. So, in a moment of weakness, such as a goodbye, it's very disconcerting to be trapped in a moment of "Do I say this?" "Is this too girly?"
In my case, we hugged it out, made jokes and I left quickly, before I could show how upsetting the whole thing really was. A lot of men feel trapped in the same way, and to those men I say damn your masculinity.
If my friends and I want to admit to each other how much this sucks and how much we're going to miss each other, why shouldn't we? We're human beings, we have emotions.
If I could do that moment over, I'd tell each of those friends, individually, how much I'm going to miss them. I'd make sure they knew that even if we have to part ways for now, we're always going to stick together because we're friends and that's what we do. So, if you're a guy reading this, hug your bro. Give him a bro fist, call him your bro, and make sure your bro knows you mean that as much as you mean it when you say you hate that stupid "YUGE FLORIDA YUGE" voice on the radio.
