the tough guy .

The tough guy act is one often seen everywhere by many people who want to portray themselves as the guy who never cries, nothing can bother him and honestly, he could give a rat's ass about anything. And yet it's hard to say that there is truly anyone who is 100% hard through and through, where nothing can reach them on the gooey inside (these people are beginning to sound like some sort of truffle dessert...). Despite being a rough and tough no-nonsense person, I think it's safe to say that everyone has their breaking point.


You push enough buttons, and eventually the alarms will start going off. One of them is the killswitch, the "do not push" giant red button that should never be touched, and yet it always happens. Even the most intimidating giant of a fellow, I'm sure, has something that will break him down to tears in minutes.

I am one of those people that, like it or not, builds up walls around himself and has been a professional emotion-bottler for years on end. It takes a long time to open the cap to the bottle, and if you do / have consider yourself lucky, because not many have the patience / time / perseverance (the list goes on...).

A long time ago I decided that my emotions were mine and mine alone and that unless I really trusted someone or really wanted them to give me advice or even just to let me vent, that it wasn't worth my time to wear my heart on my sleeve. Now of course I just blog about it where a small percentage of the people that I know can occasionally listen to my emotions as they splatter onto their web browser. However it's also safe to say that the majority of the people that read this are people whom I consider pretty close friends.

That's not to say that just because I block off emotions doesn't mean I don't have them. And if something hits me the right way int he right manner at the right time, believe me, there will be puddles on the ground when I'm done. One such time was when I decided to watch World Trade Center on my own at home. I had already seen it several times, and had definitely teared up during the movie, but this time, when I was all alone sitting there, something hit me just the right way. I can't remember any other time in my life when I have cried that hard; literally there were tears streaming down my face. It was probably a mix between the thought of losing family members or me joining the military and coming home in a coffin... which, in all honesty is definitely possible. The clock is ticking down to the time I join; there's not much time left...

And so it just goes to show that through the icy hard exterior of that ripped guy may very well be a safely guarded secret, one that can break them down and shatter their world in a single moment. And being the sympathetic and empathetic race that we are, I would hope that regardless of the all the bullshit you put up with from that person, at the end of the day, we'd be there to lend a shoulder to cry on.