Writeback #1

Be a man.

   

I was told to "be a man" and if I got hurt, don't complain and definitely don’t cry.

I can recall, from a young age, being upset and in pain. I went to the hospital, and later on, I found out that I had IBS. I couldn't understand what I was eating, which would always create this terrible feeling. I would cry and complain about the pain to my parents, and they eventually brought me to a hospital when it got really bad. I lay in the hospital bed for 8 hours while they ran many different tests. They would periodically come into the room and wheel me around to different rooms, each time with a different test to take. (X-rays, ECG, ultrasound, etc.) The room was so cold that I was shivering and tossing and turning, trying to find comfort. The doctors ended up not helping besides stating the obvious: that my stomach was the problem and that I had IBS. A lot of the time, when I'm with people, my stomach starts hurting and irritating me. In my head, I have embedded “No one likes a complainer, be a man.” so I try to keep myself from expressing my feelings. This has become a constant issue, becoming very inconvenient when I just want to live my life. I’m in pain the majority of the time, but I bite my tongue. I don't completely agree with the statement. Be a man, because I believe other men should be able to express how they’re feeling without judgment, and if they need to cry, that's okay; let them cry. For me, I was told not to be vulnerable, so when someone asks how I’m feeling, I always choose to say, I'm great, no matter what's going on. Which isn't good to do, and I understand that, but that's how I've been sculpted since an early age.