I am cringe, but I am free

One of the beautiful sub-trends I've seen over the past two weeks is the honesty about our collective feelings. I am not alone in feeling moved to pour my soul out into the world again. There is simply too much love, too much hope, too much yearning to be contained within our hearts, our minds, and our souls. It has come to a head and the only place for it to go is out through our fingers and onto the screen.

Artwork, fanfiction, music, and videos are all open declarations of yearning for the concept of a woman that is fiction of fiction. It's something I haven't seen in a very long time, at least not at this scale. The fear of being the blade of grass too tall, the crab reaching for the rim of the bucket, of being the odd one out is just... gone.

I want for you to think about yourself from early September. Put yourself in your own shoes from a month ago. Did you think you would be looking forward to seeing another art piece on Twitter? Did you think you would ever be reading fanfiction and giggling like a schoolgirl? Did you think you would discuss the story and dramatic implications of a Rule 63 Malfoy? Did you write post after post about romance and love, deeply considering the twists and turns of two nearly star-crossed lovers? Did you yearn this openly, day in and day out, for anyone or anything?

I certainly didn't.

I was content with being male #32,584,182. I was content with less. I was content with not sticking out, not reaching for a higher state of living, not being more than I was yesterday. I was content with engaging with the current outrage cycle then moving on to the next outrage cycle.

Sticking out was wrong. I was liable to be hammered down and taken advantage of. Certainly, I was open to speaking out on some topics, but in my offline life I was happy in my prison of my own design. I dressed slovenly, my apartment was unkempt, and my relationships of all kinds were non-existent. It was boring, but it was safe. No one to hurt me, no one to take advantage of me, no one to break my heart.

But today... today is different.

I'm spending more time grooming in the morning. I'm tucking my shirt in for work. I've made plans for this weekend, plans I haven't made since before 2020. I've pulled out clothes I put away years ago because I thought I'd never have any reason to wear them again. I've got a mental plan to clean up my apartment, which I will enact with my next paycheck. I'm listening to classical music at work instead of the usual trash I listen to because I want to imagine myself dancing with a woman I love.

I'm speaking openly about feelings that I've had for years now, and I've learned that I'm not alone in feeling that way. Somehow, I have a way with words and a prose that touches people's souls, putting their thoughts to words they leave unspoken. Personally, I don't see that, but I'm told otherwise and I will accept what they say.

And most of all, I believe in love again. Not only for myself, but for you too, dear reader, and for those who will never read a thing I write or even know of my existence. Deep, passionate, redemptive love, not the cheap lust that is sold with a monthly subscription (or worse, for free).

And there are people out there that would call all of that cringe.

Speaking of love like this? Aspiring for more? Doing all of this over a character from Harry Potter? What sort of idiot would do that? Life is a zero-sum game where you need to screw over everyone else in order to get ahead. Believing in something as silly as love is a fool's errand, a waste of time that will only leave you hurt and defeated while others climb over your body to get one inch farther in life.

In some ways, they're right. The world today is a much worse place than what it was when we were growing up. The Internet has brought people together, for good and for evil. We live in a fast-paced world where every negative news story, every tragic event, every single source of division from war to elections to criminal cases to marital arguments are amplified one millionfold. It tricks us into a spiral of outrage that sucks us in and never spits us out, and it's an almost perfect system.

Whether or not you're terminally online, you can feel it in the world: the rudeness in a store, the curtness in customer service, the feeling of being on edge whenever you even vaguely hear of some big news event, knowing that you'll need to walk on eggshells around someone in your life. Or perhaps it's even worse, and you know that you'll be arguing with someone close to you about something that happened half a world away.

There is vitriol in the air we breathe, a venom that goes unseen but is deep within our lungs and leaves a bitter taste in our mouths, which we spit out at the nearest person so they can repeat the process with someone else.

And yet, despite it all, the first Malfoid was posted and the rest is history.

Despite the venom.

Despite the hatred.

Despite the petty culture war fights that have persisted for a decade and a half, if not more.

Despite it all, Malfoid persists and continues to inspire men and women everywhere.

By all means, she shouldn't. She should've been a one-off post by a single artist, no different from all the other previous Rule 63 Draco Malfoy art. There is nothing, at least on the surface, that should have triggered all of... this. This yearning for more, which was considered cringe barely a fortnight ago.

I suppose part of all of this rambling is to try to figure out WHY this happening. Why am I and so many others are moved to tears and poetry? Why is Malfoid a muse? Why do I not care about being cringe?

Perhaps we're at a breaking point: a single piece of art, specifically designed and intended to make men yearn again, achieved its goal by happenstance. Maybe God willed it into being. Maybe there's finally enough men who are tired of fighting dragons without a fair maiden to rescue (with the maiden herself being the dragon in some cases).

I don't think I care, truth be told. Not everything needs a worldly explanation. Perhaps I should just accept that some things just are good. Why dissect it, tearing it apart limb from limb, just to know how it works when that will lead to its death?

Malfoid has given me and many others a way out of this never-ending cycle of outrage we've all been stuck in. That's not to say that the problems of the world are all solved. Today is very much like yesterday. There are deep societal issues that must be resolved, one way or another. There are dragons to slay, but now we have a reason to fight them.

Accepting that makes me free.

I am cringe. I want to speak of love. I want to write about how I feel, not in some "woe is me" fashion but with passion and conviction about the zest I have for life again. I want to open my suit of armor enough to show the world that I am human, but keep it on enough to fight off the dragons when they appear. I want to tap into that ancient wellspring that poets have drunk from since time immemorial and create great works of fiction. I want to love a woman, not as a piece of meat that exists only for my temporary enjoyment but as my God-appointed wife who will be the mother of my children, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

I want to be cringe, and that makes me free.