The Beast and Tears

Sort of inspired by my own mother telling me it was alright to cry after I'd taken my father's words against doing so to heart. I was carrying around a lot of nonsense and acting out because I kept trying to be the "man" my father told me to be when I was just a 10 year old boy and my mother telling me it was not wrong to cry and that I was just a boy and that I shouldn't put so much on my shoulders just felt so cathartic.

My father traveled a lot for work and would say I was "the man of the house" when he was gone and, though I knew he said it lightly, a part of me took it too seriously to put it mildly.