I won’t lie, I don’t share a lot of experiences with you and others who are generously taking part in this post. But as this all has played out I recognized the absolute need for a post like this — separate from the memes, separate from potentially speaking over women, because there is a lot of unspoken pain.
This comment made my cry, friend. It is obscenely and heartbreakingly ironic the level of lashing out men can receive for simply stating their lived truth in the world of today. And your story is certainly a brutish example of that. I hope that you found some catharsis and relief having expressed your story here, and I hope that this can be a start of some continued recovering and healing both for you and the others in this community.