John Lee - The Flying Boy

 
John's First Book
 
If you fly away from commitments, responsibilities, intimacy, feelings, male friendships and your own body, chances are you are a Flying Boy. If you are a woman reading this, chances are you have loved or come into contact with a Flying Boy.
Flying Boys frequently use fantasy to escape reality. They hide in their mind/intellect, reason to avoid the pain they keep in their bodies. They appear to all but those closest to them as sensitive, gentle and completely in touch with their feelings. The truth, except in the most extreme circumstances, is that they seldom even know they have bodies and feelings.
Fate and circumstance always seem to be controlling their lives. They can’t quite make life work for themselves. When things do begin to work out or they finally succeed at something, they fly off in pursuit of another city, lover, job, degree, religion or drug.
Flying Boys are often addicted to sex, work, pain and failure as much as they are to intensity and darkness. They are constantly coming down from ecstatic highs and descending into deep, dramatic depressions. They seek the extremes and are bored with the in-between times.
Flying Boys often grew up in dysfunctional families. Their fathers were both emotionally and physically absent. Their mothers often tried to compensate for this loss. In the process, the Flying Boy learned to reject his masculinity and grew to overvalue the feminine. He experienced his feminine side vicariously through his mother and other mother-like women in his life.
I wrote this book to heal my “Flying Boy” wound and to heal my relationship with my parents and with the women I have loved. This book can also help those women who discover they have loved Flying Boys.
This is a story about feelings – losing them – finding them – and finally expressing them. Also woven throughout is a sad love song about a woman’s unconditional love. All of the characters in this book are living people, and I have changed some names to protect their privacy. Laural is a composite character based on more than one woman I have loved and hurt.
You will find people you know in my story. You will learn how you may have hurt those people and been hurt by them. You will also discover a great deal of your own anger, hurt and sadness. You will see how we stuff our emotions and feelings deep inside ourselves and hold them there. We learned to believe that it was somehow superior and more spiritual to hold in our feelings, even at the cost of our health and well-being.
You will find a way out of your anger, sadness and depression and discover safe, sane ways to express yourself without fear.
This book talks about grieving, a very misunderstood process often confused with self-pity. Self-pity often leads to, or perpetuates, self-destruction in a variety of forms and is substantially different from grieving. Grieving is your right and is a grounding, cleansing and finally healing experience.
There is hope for Flying Boys/Wounded Men and for women who love them. Like myself, many men are healing themselves right now and thus allowing the Flying Boy’s positive side to fully emerge. This book will further the healing process by helping the Flying Boy land, love and then gently labor to create peace and joy within himself, his family, society and the world. It will also open doors to understanding, compassion and empathy for women who love wounded men.