Dar Williams - When I was a boy

[bflydad]

I kept listening to this sing tonight:

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/wheniwas.htm

It is all about gender roles and although the emphasis is on what girls have to give up in order to become women, it is the last stanza sung from a man's perspective that keeps running through me:

And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness

The song (along with another recent thread) made me think about what I have given up in the name of manhood. While I have worked long and hard to try to regain my personhood, crying is one of those things that still eludes me (I've only been able to cry once since breaking up with my first love almost twenty years ago).

I can also remember being in my teens and early 20s and still first seeing a girl/woman as a person and only noticing her looks later. At times I wonder if I'm remembering a dream or memory but I remember even talking to a woman I knew at the time about it. I've been working at recapturing this for seven years and while I've made some progress, I still have a long way to go.

So, here is my question to anyone who feels like sharing. What do you remember having to give up as you went from child to adult? What have you been trying to recapture ever since?