When I was a kid in school, I was the boy who cried. I was bullied fairly continuously from Year 4 to Year 10, because I was the weird kid, the kid who couldn't control the crying, who none of the girls wanted to touch "Eww! Kirby germs!", and who none of the boys wanted to be friends with.
My brothers were constantly asking me why I cried every day going home from school. That's not what they did. It's not what boys did.
It took moving to a completely different state to get away from it enough that I could stop being afraid of bullies. By the time I got to Uni, I used to think that I had my emotions under control.
Then Trauma struck. I had a year of hell. Now I have Trauma emotions to deal with as well.
I have to remind myself every second of every day that me feeling shitty, or me feeling emotional, does not make me any less of a man. That the fact I can't watch most comedy anymore because I get too embarrassed whenever the characters do something strange or weird to be able to watch doesn't make me less than who I was when I was a teenager. That emotional limits on my behaviour might well be a good thing, instead of something that means that my boyfriend has to watch a lot of interesting movies without me, and that I can't watch cop shows without a finger on the remote.
Maybe one day I'll believe it. But I sure as hell don't now.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2009-07-25 12:08 am (UTC)My brothers were constantly asking me why I cried every day going home from school. That's not what they did. It's not what boys did.
It took moving to a completely different state to get away from it enough that I could stop being afraid of bullies. By the time I got to Uni, I used to think that I had my emotions under control.
Then Trauma struck. I had a year of hell. Now I have Trauma emotions to deal with as well.
I have to remind myself every second of every day that me feeling shitty, or me feeling emotional, does not make me any less of a man. That the fact I can't watch most comedy anymore because I get too embarrassed whenever the characters do something strange or weird to be able to watch doesn't make me less than who I was when I was a teenager. That emotional limits on my behaviour might well be a good thing, instead of something that means that my boyfriend has to watch a lot of interesting movies without me, and that I can't watch cop shows without a finger on the remote.
Maybe one day I'll believe it. But I sure as hell don't now.