Boys are mean

Location

home
Timberlane Drive
United States
43° 38' 50.3052" N, 88° 21' 55.2276" W

Boys are mean
and I should know.

We as a sex have a false ideal of ourselves as the Vikings of our times; noble barbarians taking what we want and dying for honor and family. Even the Vikings had limits, though.

As a child I looked at myself and at other boys and thought "I'm not like you." I was chubby and weak and afraid, i didn't play football, I didn't fight. I swam, not competitively. I floated on my back, hoping someone would think I was dead because then they'd notice me.

As a child I looked at the boys and knew I was different, somehow, that something was indecipherably and irrevocably incorrect within me. My penis was the mark of the beast, binding me forever to the crude and the rough and the rowdy, when all I wanted to do was read a little more.

So I developed this sense of being a not-male. I looked to the girls, but they were shrewd and unsupportive. They clawed at each other and whispered horrid things beneath dimly lit pillow forts and in hastily scrawled notes, and I dared not hear them, I dared not open a note for the sheer terror of seeing my name scribbled in perfect, sweet handwriting. And so I walked the middle, too afraid to be a man, too yielding to be a girl.

Once, I told another boy. My backyard, a thick green acre surrounded by overgrown corn and tall, skeletal trees. "I think I might be a girl." He laughed. I didn't tell anyone else.

At Challenge Day in the seventh grade, they tried to tell me that it was okay. That I can cry and be a man. That I dont have to be what society wants me to be. I nodded, like I understood. And part of me did, and part of me knew nothing would change. They told us to hug all our friends, to keep them close, and for awhile everyone hugged everyone else all the time. That didn't feel right to me. I didn't hug anyone for a while.

Boys are mean. We tell ourselves that a man protects. A man provides. A man makes his own decisions. A man will die for the ones he loves.

So when the first girl I ever loved refused to hold my hand, I accepted it. When she wouldn't talk to me for weeks at a time,  I looked to myself for fault. I examined myself in the mirror, even as a child, thinking 'how could anyone love you?' I weighed and measured every part of my soul with a scrutiny the devil would wince at. I decided I was not good enough, and when we broke up I didn't cry.

Because a man provides. And if I didn't provide enough comfort and joy for her to want to be near me, how could I be worth anything?

I met another girl, and for a while things were different. I explained myself to her, how much I disliked who I was, and she seemed to love me for it. Later, when her dad died and, bereft of any other outlet, she began to beat me, I kept quiet. When she began to coat me in a thick shell of tears and resentment and "you're such a fucking failure", I wore it. I wore it like it had always been there. Maybe it had.


I told no one. People would hate her. They'd want to fight for me. She'd be hurt.

And a man protects the people he loves.

When I finally gained the courage to tear her off me, I met another girl. She was bigger than me, and harbored even greater sorrow. I wanted to help. All I wanted was to help. And when she dug the knife into her skin, I cried out in pain, for wasn't it my fault? Was I so meaningless that she could hurt herself so deeply and badly and not even think of me?
A man protects, and I couldn't.

When she left, I resigned. I hung up my hat and coat and leaned into a life alone, for surely that was what awaited me. How could anyone care for me? A short, fat kid with diabetes and a ridiculous allergy. I quit love, once and for all. A few times, I began to long for someone. Someone I thought special, or kind, or funny, and when they validated my self-loathing I burned away at my heartstrings.

Things changed. I met you.

And I'm starting to realize...
maybe I don't want to be.

Comments

Shaun Poet

so deep.... just so deep....

great poetic enhancement toward what could of been simple statements,

I just loved it, felt it, experienced some...

keep moving your pen for it is a great narrator.

_Shaun Poet

 

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