The Men Who Checked On Me

I am here partly because a few men would not leave me alone.

That is the whole thing. I could stop typing right there.

But I want to say what it actually looked like, because I think most men want to check on a friend and never do it, and the reason they never do it is that they are picturing the wrong thing.

What people think checking on a man looks like

They think it is a conversation.

They think you have to sit down across from him, ask a big question, and be ready to handle whatever comes out of it. They think there is a right thing to say and they do not know what it is, so they wait until they know it, and they never know it, so they never go.

I understand it. I have been on that side of it. I have had a friend on my mind for a solid week and said nothing, because I could not think of anything worth saying.

Here is what I had wrong. He is not waiting on the right words. He is waiting to find out if anybody is still out there.

Read that again. He is not grading your sentence.

What it actually looked like

In my worst stretch, the men who got through to me did almost nothing impressive.

One of them just kept texting. Not deep. Not about any of it. Just kept texting week after week like nothing had changed, because as far as he was concerned nothing had.

One of them showed up and did not ask me a single hard question. He asked what needed doing. Then he did it. Then he left.

One of them called and got voicemail, and called again the next week and got voicemail, and called again.

None of that is impressive. All of it is rare.

That is the part I want you to hear. Nobody who got to me was good with words. They were just stubborn.

Why men go quiet

A man who is going under does not send up a flare. He goes flat.

He answers good and means nothing by it. He stops starting things. He is still at work, still functional, still cracking the same joke he always cracks, and there is nobody home behind it.

I know exactly how that looks from the inside, because I lived in there. And I will tell you the honest reason I did not reach out. It was not that I did not want help. It was that I did not want to be a project. I did not want to be somebody heavy phone call of the week.

So if you make it easy, he will take it. If you make it a summit meeting, he will pass.

Make it easy.

The two text method

Here is the whole system. Two texts. Send them off your phone the way they are written. You do not have to improve them.

Text one. Send it today. Put no question in it.

Hey. You have been on my mind this week. No reason. Just wanted you to know it.

That is the entire text. Do not ask how he is doing. A question is a bill he has to pay. This one is a gift he does not owe you anything for, and that is exactly why he will read it four times.

Text two. Send it three or four days later. One question, and make it easy to answer.

You free Saturday morning? Coffee, or I will just come help you with whatever you are working on. Either one. Say when.

Notice what that does. It does not ask him to talk. It asks him to show up somewhere. Men will do side by side a whole lot easier than face to face. If he says yes, do not open with the hard question. Work first. He will talk once his hands are busy, or he will not, and either way he is not by himself on a Saturday.

If he does not answer

Do not take it personal, and do not stop.

1. Wait four or five days, then send something with zero weight on it. A picture. A dumb thing you saw. Something the two of you used to laugh about. You are not checking on him now. You are just being present.

2. Wait another week and text again. Same energy. Still nothing heavy. You are proving you are not going anywhere, and proof takes repetition.

3. On the third round, quit texting and go. Drive over. Do not announce it as a check in. Bring food, or bring a tool and a reason. I was headed this way anyhow. Standing on a man front porch is a different thing than a text, and you both know it.

4. If you cannot get there, call somebody who can. His brother. His neighbor. His pastor. Somebody with a shorter drive. You are not telling his business. You are asking a man who is closer to go lay eyes on him.

5. Keep the appointment with yourself. Put a repeating reminder in your phone with his name on it. That is not cold. That is exactly how the men who got to me did it, whether they ever knew it or not. They were consistent in a season when I was not.

And if what you see worries you, say the plain thing out loud. I am worried about you, and I am not going anywhere. You do not have to be qualified to say that. You just have to be standing there to say it.

What I owe

I never paid a single one of those men back, and not one of them ever asked me to.

I do not think that is how it works. I think you pay it sideways. You go be stubborn for somebody else.

That is what I do now. Somebody stays on my mind, I send it. I quit waiting until I had something good to say, because I finally understand there is no good thing to say. There never was. That was never the assignment.

The assignment was showing up.

Before you comment on this one, go send the first text. Then come back and tell me who you sent it to.