what there is to love about a man: conflicts

Excerpt from my out-of-print book, What There Is To Love About A Man (Sourcebooks), which honors and celebrates masculine qualities of body, mind and spirit. Used and imperfect copies can be found here and there on the Internet, if you feel like digging.

How can I show you who I really am, when I don’t even know myself? How can I share with you my vulnerable side, when everybody told me I had to be strong? What if I want to spend the rest of my life with a man? What if I want to spend the rest of my life with a woman? How can it be that I’ve trashed my marriage vows all in the name of love? Who’s going to teach my son how to love, when his father can hardly figure it out for himself? How can I become my own man, when my job and my church and my country always said I belonged to them? How do I stand in my personal power without stepping on other people’s toes? How can I let go and not lose everything I’ve worked my whole life to get? How am I supposed to listen to that still, small voice inside, when the rooftop chatter in my head just gets louder all the time? What if I change — really change — and you don’t like who I become? What if I don’t, either? How do I follow my bliss and still pay the bills? How much longer can I keep doing the same things in the same way — and expect everything to turn out differently?