“Boys don’t cry!”
Or,
“Don’t cry like a girl!”
Are phrases we’ve all encountered time and again in our lives.
Especially young boys.
What about expressing emotions is considered a weakness?
Or what about being a girl is considered a lack of strength?
As young children,
We are mindlessly being taught that expressing how one feels is a sign of weakness,
While bottling it all up and suffering alone in silence is a showing of strength.
A display of masculinity.
Is our masculinity so fragile,
That something as small as a display of emotions can deem us unworthy?
Or are we so messed up as a society,
That we teach our kids to suffer in silence?
Telling them that they can’t come to us when they need us most.
Forcing them to grow up well before their years.
It may not seem like a huge deal,
But look around you.
All of us are silenced kids,
Stuck in adult bodies,
Nursing bleeding hearts.
And we just can’t seem to find a way out.
We don’t know how to express ourselves,
We don’t know how to draw boundaries.
We’re uncomfortable around emotions,
And we run away from confrontations.
We’ve grown more comfortable with pain,
Than we’ve ever been with peace.
We excel under stress,
And thrive in chaos.
When you really think about it,
Isn’t it doing more damage than good?
We’re just a bunch of grown up humans,
Who don’t even know what to do with our emotions.
We don’t know how to recognize our emotions,
Or even process them.
We can’t talk to someone about it,
Without feeling like a burden.
And even before we can put them into actual words,
Our emotions get lost in translation.
If only we had allowed our children to cry,
If only we had sat with them through it instead of shaming them for it.
If only we had held their hands through the difficult parts and helped them navigate through it,
If only we had held them while they cried and told them that it was absolutely okay to cry.
If only we had told them that they didn’t have to carry this burden on their own,
If only we had made them see that they weren’t alone.
If only we had held their broken pieces together while they fell apart when they couldn’t do it on their own,
Maybe,
Just maybe,
We wouldn’t have been so broken after all.
the_distracted_soul 