Anonymous
Photography by Julia Nichols.
If you’re reading this, know it's okay to express emotion.
While this may not apply to you, the trope of young men not being able to fully express their feelings was true for me. Feelings were not accepted in my house. Well, actually that’s a lie. My sister could be sad, cry, or get help for mental illness. But I, her brother, couldn’t.
This mindset of ‘no feelings allowed’ in my home bled into other aspects of my life. I did not share things with friends, felt uncomfortable expressing myself around new people, and never learned how to process events that I experienced. These led me to shallow relationships, which I never fully committed to because I did not know how.
I adopted a ‘bottle it up’ mindset. It seemed perfect at the time. Who needs feelings when I could simply just, not experience them? Or rather, I would just shove and push everything down because I believed it was un-masculine of me to do anything else.
In case you were wondering, bottling everything up is not a great way to go about experiencing emotion. Eventually, no matter what, those bottles will tip over, and everything will spill out. We all have different limits on how much we can take, but I truly believe, no matter who you are, eventually you just can’t push anything else down.
Hitting that breaking point for me was one of the lowest points I have experienced. Years of silenced emotions rushed all out at once, which led me into a period of my life in which I did a lot of things I am not proud of and am still trying to move past. Bottling up my emotions never allowed me to express who I really am, and once they all came out, I was trapped in a set of behaviors that still didn’t reflect the person, or rather, the man I wanted to be.
I often think about a song by BRELAND titled ‘Real Men Don’t Cry’. It resonates with me not because of the title, but because of the message. The singer discusses how this trope has affected him, and how it also affects others around him as he “hurt[s] the ones who try to help.” Not being able to express your emotions in a healthy way does not just hurt you, but it hurts others. This harmful stereotype in our culture hurts everyone involved. It hurt me, and I sincerely hope other young men begin challenging it so they do not feel the same hurt I did.
If you’re reading this, know it's okay to express emotion.
Anonymous, Northwestern University
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