In our Western Society, we raise our little boys to be strong. From a young age, we tell them big boys don't cry. Big boys are tough. Big boys don't like pink and purple. They like blue, black, or green. They play in the dirt with trucks or build things with Legos. They rough house with other young boys play sports until it's dark outside. While some may argue we are coming away from this gender stereotype, I beg to differ. We may say we are releasing these societal expectations that we accept them for whoever they are. Yet, in reality, we are not raising our boys with this message. We still indirectly influence their choices by our reactions when they do tell us their favorite color is pink or they come to us crying with a booboo. We react. They see these reactions.
To push all this further, we have also raised a generation of little girls with the same standards. We raise them to be tough like the little boys. Don't cry when you get hurt. Showing your emotional side makes you well emotional, and we know that if they want to grow up to be in a man's world, they have to learn early how to be "one of the boys." We cannot fathom requesting the boy's world to be a little more tender or accept to play nice with the girls.
We teach all of our children: You have to be tough and strong. Being tough is being strong. We must be strong to make it in the big tough world.
I am not exempt from this upbringing. I was raised by two very strong, tough, independent women. My mother made her way into the world of science when women getting their Ph.D. in a scientific field was still rare. To get to where she is, I know my mother had to be tough. She was not allowed to show much to any emotion except positivity towards her work. She is the perfect example of when women were allowed to play in the big boy's world what happened. We hardened. Rightfully so. Women were allowed to play with the big boys as long as they kept up with all their household responsibilities. While I love my father and never felt he was absent from my life, he also didn't do much of the heavy lifting when raising us. Mom was there every morning, waking us up. Mom was there hauling us around every day wherever we needed to go. Mom was coming home after 2 hours of child wrangling in the morning, 8-9 hours at the office, to cook us dinner. Dad did play a significant role in bedtime, probably because mom was already spent by that point napping on the couch. I do not hate how I was raised, but growing up and realizing the disproportionate amount of responsibility for my mother cannot be ignored either. They were working the system they were taught, but the system was a little broken.
The other woman was my Godmother, who was also our full-time sitter when my mother was at work. She was a badass woman who I would best describe as stoic. She just had this feel about here of a no-nonsense persona. Basically…you didn't fuck with Pat! Maybe this is because she put the fear of God in us from a young age to control us, heathen children, better or maybe this was just her personality. She was not a mean bitter woman, she was quite loving, to be honest, but she didn't take shit from anyone!
With these two examples of strong females to resemble as I grew older, it's no surprise I got the lesson that to be strong, you must be hard. You can't take shit from anyone, and you have to show your strength, so no one fucks with you. I didn't learn how to be soft. By nature, I was a tom-boy. I would rather play outside in the dirt than with dolls. I played every sport growing up, from soccer to softball, with a little gymnastics thrown in there. Jean shorts and a tee-shirt were my uniform. I hated wearing dresses with a passion, and don't even get me started with tights. I understand why little girls like me need tights…we aren't good at keeping our dresses down or sitting properly. But I hated every second of wearing them as a child.
I was tough, alright. I have more scars on my body from before middle school to prove it. This toughness probably would've stuck with me if it weren't for the emotional roller coaster I experienced from the end of middle school through high school.
Starting when I was in 6th grade, life got turned upside down. It started with my father losing his job, which lead to Pat no longer babysitting us, which in reality was a blessing overall because her health was failing anyway. Between my 7th and 8th grade year, my sister's eating disorder took hold of her and our family. It started to truly threaten her health, and we were supposed to keep all this information within the family. No one could talk about it except the whole town was. Because my parents wouldn't discuss it with other parents, rumors ran wild as they do in a small town. I was being bombarded left and right by some of my best friends about what was wrong with my sister, and I was expected to suck it up and not say a word. I was hard for a time. It worked until I found myself rushing to the bathroom regularly to cry in a stall just so no one would see me. Because tough girls don't cry, they handle their shit and cry in private.
At the age of 13, without any other outlet, this is exactly how I handled my pain. The pain got worse as she fell victim more and more to her illness. Then that Christmas, Grandpop died. At that age, I couldn't tell you why I always felt so close to him. He never treated me differently than his other two grandchildren. If anything, I was jealous of him and my brother's relationship. You know the only grandson gets all the cool car facts! His death hit me hard, whether it was the season or not getting to say goodbye in person. It was hard. The tears were gone. I went numb.
Numb was best. Numb was easiest. If I didn't care, things couldn't get worse right? Things didn't exactly get worse from that point. They just never improved either. The more prolonged hardship goes on in a family or community, or society; it doesn't make things worse. It only hardens you. I'm sure I still cried at times. I know I still felt pain. Pain became apparent again when my Godmother died around Christmas, my Sophomore year. I cried the night she was sent home from the hospital because the doctors said there was nothing left to do. I cried as I stood by her bedside, and she squeezed my hand as I told her I loved her for the last time and wished I had told her every second of every day.
Greif added to the pain changes things for a little while. It distracts you away from the constant hardship for a little bit. Things went back quickly. I was number.
In the Spring of 2004, my neighbor introduced me to the new way she found to feel. At the age of 15, I started physically harming myself with straight razors to feel again. I started cutting. It helped.
I'm not sure what made the action so satisfying. Was it the way the razor cut through my skin effortlessly without my body physically stopping me? Or the effort it took to stop the bleeding and hide the cut? Or wondering when someone, anyone would notice the 6-inch methodical cuts up my inner forearm? Or how the entire process was such a release from the first site of blood to the fresh scar appearing?
I genuinely don't know how or why this process works. I've told many therapists about the behavior once I grew out of the habit. All I know, we create practices to protect ourselves when we act tough. We develop habits to cope with the pain when we don't release in healthy ways through communication or tears streaming down our faces or asking for the help we need. When we try to bottle everything up on the inside to convince the world on the outside everything is okay, we will find a release.
We will find a release to ease the pain. We will take the easy way out and numb the pain. We will use a habit, a drug, a hobby, food, etc., to hide the pain. Anything so we can ignore the pain.
I did that for over 15 years of my life. I did that until my mental health became an issue.
That's when I decided I had to face the pain. I had to do the work. I had to "buck up Buttercup" and dig deep. Over the past three years, I've found the strength to do the work. It's not easy. I won't lie. Facing all the pain, all the tears, all the emotions does one thing. It strengthens you. So you handle more processing and healing.
The main thing I've learned over the past three years, being "tough" is indeed the easy way out. Tough is ignoring the pain. Tough is walking away from the problem. Tough protects you from the work it takes to solve the problem. Showing up openly, authentically, and vulnerably to face your pain takes more strength than tucking it away somewhere to put on a tough face for the world.
It took 15 years for me to finally break open. To give in and find the strength to work through the past 15 years of pain and coping, it wasn't easy work. I know it isn't over, but I know I've developed more strength, more grit, more confidence in the past three years of facing my pain than I did in the 15 years of being tough and ignoring it.
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