When the Only Way Out is Through

the desperate need for masculine stoicism

---

This is a personal story about something I experienced today, and what I learned from it. This story uses the words “men” and “masculinity” in reference to several positive character traits. To forestall likely objections: I am not saying that only men have these traits or that all men have these traits. I am literally a woman who owns no dresses or skirts, uses no make-up, decorates her home with Star Trek and mathematics-themed decor, and does coding problems for fun. I require no education about the fact that sex stereotypes don’t apply to everyone in every way all the time.

In other words, supply your own “not alls.”

---

The Blessing of Masculinity

My friend Adam, a based gay man from Canada, is visiting me this weekend.

I’ve had a great deal of fun showing him all the ways in which Vermont really is “Canada Junior,” including introducing him to the fact that even people whose houses are in such remote parts of this lily-white state that they almost certainly are seen by more black bears than black people are, nevertheless, master virtue signalers.

Today we went hiking in a state park, wherein we had an adventure and I learned something important.

I had chosen the hiking spot carefully. It was rated “intermediate,” which seemed perfect. It would, with luck, be reasonably fun and not boring for Adam and a challenge, though—from the research I did—a manageable one, I believed, for me. Adam is an avid cyclist in excellent condition. I am improving my physical fitness in a safe, reasonable, slow-but-sure manner, but this hike was definitely going to be a real challenge for me, one I was eager to take on and conquer.

The gradient on the hike was a lot more steep than I expected. Nearly all of it was uphill, and Adam took a lot of pictures while waiting on me to catch up to him, or to catch my breath.

About a third of the way into the hike, when it was obvious that it was a greater challenge than I expected, it occurred to me how grateful I was to be on this hike with a male friend. A female friend would have been asking me repeatedly if I wanted to go back, reassuring me that it was fine to do so, and otherwise attempting to end the state of mild anxiety and obvious physical challenge I was experiencing. (And yes, if the roles were reversed, I would have absolutely been doing that.)

Adam did none of these things. He looked out for me — walking ahead, where he could warn me of loose rocks or other things I should be careful of (I am clumsy AF) — but for the first two hours we were in the park, he only “reassured” me in two ways. He took pictures when I stopped to rest, and a couple of times told me to “take your time.”

The closer we got to the end, the more excited I got. This was a significant challenge, and with the patient company of my friend, I was going to conquer it. Slowly. Much more slowly than either of us planned going into it, but conquer it nonetheless.

That I was in a state park to hike, at all, is something that was only possible at all because of a miracle cure for vertigo I experienced earlier this year. That was heavily on my mind, and my gratitude for the opportunity and for Adam’s presence and stoic manner pushing me not to give up, mixed with the endorphins of the intense exercise to make the hike a wonderful experience….until something happened.

Shit Happens

One of the things I didn’t research about this hike, because I didn’t know I needed to, was the extent to which a hiker would need leverage on some of the big step-up places. Adam is 6’4”, and with his long legs made it up all the step-ups just fine.

Me? I needed leverage. Being right-handed, I used my right arm for this instinctively, as well as catching myself with my right arm a few times when I stumbled.

My right shoulder has been seriously injured twice, once when I was a kid and once in a car wreck. As a consequence of poor medical care in both cases and using my arm differently for years, my shoulder hurts daily. Typically I live around it and only think about it if I happen to aggravate my shoulder.

About three-quarters of the way through the hike, my shoulder was making me aware of its presence. The overuse of giving myself leverage for some of the huge step-ups had my shoulder feeling very sore, but it was manageable.

Then I stumbled and caught myself with my right arm, hard, and knew at once that I had wrenched my shoulder worse than I had in years.

We kept on, but the pain in my shoulder got worse and worse. About twenty minutes later, I was experiencing the worst symptom of having aggravated my shoulder — nerve pain shooting into the pinkie finger of my right hand, nerve pain that shot anew with every heavy step onto a rock. The rest of the hike was steeply uphill, and the pain was slowing my already-slow pace.

We were probably two hours from finishing when we sat down to decide what to do.

A Perfect Moment of Masculine Friendship

Adam left it up to me, and even though we were close to the end, I decided to turn around and go back. The hike had been uphill almost entirely, so turning around and going back would be downhill. Using a walking stick in my left hand would mean that I did not have to use my shoulder as leverage at all, and it was hurting badly enough that making sure I didn’t make it worse seemed the wisest course.

We made much better time going back, of course, but the step-downs onto the rocks continuously causing nerve pain to shoot down my arm meant Adam got to listen to a fair amount of grunting.

He distracted me with stories about a potential new love interest as well as letting me blather about prime numbers to help distract myself, but the journey got harder as we went. I really did aggravate my bad shoulder quite severely. By the end I was not far from tears.

He was ahead of me, scouting for loose rocks, and for the second time I caught myself thinking how grateful I was to be with a stoic, masculine friend. I was in enough pain to set off my internal panic response under normal circumstances, but his being just super chill and encouraging, cheerfully announcing things like “I remember this natural bridge from the beginning of the hike; we’re getting there” and at one point telling me, “Keep on going, you are tough as fucking nails!”

Not long after the (hilarious) discussion about whether it would ever be advisable to fuck nails, he said something I didn’t catch and then, as I kept my eyes on my boots, he vanished.

When he came back, he had done the most precisely perfect thing — gone on ahead to get an idea of how far we were from the end. When he came back, he told me how long it had taken him to jog to where he could see the end and back, which let us estimate how much farther we had to go.

He figured out—masculine instincts, again, since I wasn’t even consciously aware of this myself—that I would bear up significantly better if I knew how much longer it was going to last. Those were perfectly correct instincts, and infinitely more reassuring than any empathy for being in pain and, at this point, seriously overtired could ever have been.

A Lesson In This?

To summarize: someone with a chronic-pain injury (a real, unfair disadvantage rooted in a real problem) aggravated it by trying to meet a challenge.

Instead of empathy, validation, coddling, or direct soothing, her friend provided a stable presence that helped look out for dangers (helping to navigate, not eliminate, life’s obstacles). Then he provided a precise and accurate estimation of what it would take for her to meet the challenge, even when it sucked, and was there to encourage (but not rescue).

And it worked. I got through it just fine and without becoming very upset (which would be typical for me when in pain and scared). I am in a fair amount of pain, but I haven’t cried at all and am both significantly less anxious and noticeably less emotionally activated (severe pain sometimes causes me PTSD issues) than I would have dared hope, if this had been predicted in advance.

In other words….when something difficult happened for which the only way out was through, the greatest, most beneficial, and most valuable help was found in the virtues of stoicism, pressing on, determination, and demonstrating faith in the suffering person’s ability to cope with the difficulty.

It was not found in indulging an impulse to coddle, empathize, nurture, and rescue. Nor was it found in identifying the systemic causes and roots of the oppression at the root of the suffering (for surely there can never be such a thing as suffering without oppression!).

Gosh.

I wonder if there are any lessons for the culture around us to be learned here?

---

This is a post that would normally be behind my paywall as part of my creative writing series, wherein I take risks, post photo essays, review Woke books to mock them viciously, post writing experiments, and tell personal stories. Paid subscribers have access to my series on How to Not Suck at Math, as well as comments when they’re turned on (weekends for now; weekday comments will return when I’m more settled into my new job).

---