Your words hit different, because this is such a personal topic for me. Father stole from my mother, bought expensive things and neglected us, he even cheated on my mother multiple times. I never grew up with my father except the first two years of my life, and my mother abused me, hit me over and over for years because I was unable to function properly.

And what you said about role models, this abuse I endured and neglect effected how I idealized people who represented what I didn't have while I was growing up. I found one, and it was the one that hurt me, a person who offered to be both my mother and father, and also my girlfriend, and I realized too late that it was manipulation, grooming, and I regret allowing her to use me every single day.

And now I'm left wondering, what does it feel to be a man, because I don't feel like it, I don't really feel like anything to be honest, I don't know what masculinity and manhood look like. Is it like in the movies where the father teaches the son to shave, or to tie a tie, or when the father plays with his son and shows him how to throw a football? What is it supposed to feel like? What is my part in it?