Excerpt: A Fresh Start from "The Makings..."

Up until the point where I had my heart crushed and my world as I knew it collapsed around me, I believed I was the good man.  I felt I was the guy who would always do what was right. I had developed a strong sense of devotion and dedication.  I had a strong foundation in my faith in God.  

I was raised the way any single mother would raise her youngest son in hopes he would not become one of the numerous “no good” men his mother resented because of their previous transgressions.  Most importantly, I liked the man I was inside. 

In one instance, one moment in time, my first love had violated all the things I knew near and dear to me and sent me towards a dark path of an unknown world.  Well, perhaps it was more than just the one particular event, the lies associated with it, or the drawn out break up which turned my emotions inward, shut off from myself and the things I saw as important in life.  It was these events mixed in with a little bit of influence from outside sources.

Men, you see, we tend to congregate together if you haven’t noticed.  We rarely have the compatibility issues our female counterparts tend to have.  We bond with one another on so many different levels, and it is towards our most genuine companions we tend to most emulate and gravitate.  Perhaps it is the deep-rooted desire to have a personal relationship with our fathers, who sometimes have gone on to live their own lives, which forces us to build each other up. 

Whatever the case, statistically speaking, I’m confident saying if you find a group of men or connect with a bunch of guys, you will generally find they act a lot alike.  They will use the same phrases and mannerisms… that is if they truly consider each other to be brothers.  Maybe it’s the whole “alpha male theory” that applies here; basically, the most dominant traits in the pack float to the top.  I don’t know and maybe I am stretching a bit here, but I believe no matter how you look at it, my boys were partially instrumental in my initial transformation from childhood to manhood. (To Be Continued).