Sometimes You Just Need A Hug...or "I want my mommy"

Contrary to the popular belief and conventional wisdom that men must be courageous, strong and brave all the time, sometimes us men can just get overwhelmed and need a great big hug by a set of enveloping arms and maybe even be able to, dare I say it, shed a tear from time to time.  Today was one of those overwhelming days for me.  Not because anything in particular happened; the stars aligned, the tides were right, the barometric pressure was just so, the phone rang once too often and the pot just kinda boiled over, creating one of those I need a hug days.

I wish I knew how to prevent these events, but most of them are totally and completely beyond my control.  Life changes with the ring of the phone and, unfortunately, I have no choice but to answer the damn thing.

I have reached the point of losing it completely three or four times in my life.  A couple involved women and, I admit it, I cried like a baby.  In one case I have a witness.  Life, as I knew it, was over.  I was crushed, my heart broken and left a pile of spineless flesh.  The truth be told, I brought these instances on myself and I probably, no make that almost certainly, deserved it.  On one occasion a man actually tried to kill me and my brain was not able to wrap itself around this event.  It resulted in my beating a man into hospitalization.  The shrink called it a "psychotic break" apparently a part of something called Acute Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I am not a big man because I was able to beat a man senseless and under different circumstances, would have been criminally charged.  I actually feel it was an act of cowardice on my part, but I shall save that for another time.  The final time I was just overloaded, having investigated every dead child that had occurred in a rather large county for five years straight.  I knew something was terribly wrong when I was able to point to every photo of every child on the bulletin board on my wall and tell you their names and birthdays.  Do it long enough and you will snap, trust me.  If you don't snap, you will eventually become so dull emotionally you will become the moral equivalent of a zombie.

Today was just one of those days I would have liked to have been able to come home to a kind, strong, loving and understanding woman with a set of outstretched arms and a few kind words who would have done nothing more than listen to me complain, bitch, piss and moan.  Having such a person in our lives is not an option, it is a requirement, a necessity and as needed as food and water at times.  It is something that keeps us sane and, yes, it is nothing more than a carrying on of a man's need for his mommy.  I am not ashamed to say that I have been in situations of absolute, abject, life-threatening terror that I have screamed for my mommy.  I have screamed a few other words during the initial shock, but once the bone-chilling fear took hold and the reality of the fact that I might just die in a moment or two set in, I called out for my mommy.  Although, not quite the same, what more comforting feeling can a man have than when hi smother hugs him.  It is the ultimate protection, followed closely by pulling the covers up over our head.

I find that the next best thing is to just write it down here and share it with the greater world.  This is my version of the Doogie Hauser diary of the T.V. series of the same name.  I think that struck a chord and I am living that portion of wisdom in my own life.  I feel better now.  I still could use the hug, but now I can go on better without it.