WHEN 'MAN-NING UP' DOESN'T CUT IT!

 

Man up! Man up! Until there’s a Man down!. How many men have to go down before we start speaking up and stop ‘Man-ning’ up?

So many men like myself have heard the phrase ‘Man Up'! like a million times from childhood, or other phrases like ‘Be a man’, ‘Na Man you be’, ‘Chest the pain like a man’, ‘Men don’t cry’ etc. but men do cry or sometimes want to cry but we bottle up our emotions for fear of being called ‘weak’.

Growing up, my father was my childhood hero and best friend; living through childhood with him, my 3 sisters and my mum was a lot of fun before my younger brother joined the fun when I was 11. However, that fun was cut short when I was 16 - my dad died and everything changed. I remember when we heard the news, my sisters were wailing, my mum was all over the place, my brother was just 4 but seeing my mum’s state also started crying but everyone around was telling me to ‘Man Up’, ‘You are now the man of the house’, ‘You have to be strong for your mum and siblings’, ‘Don’t cry, na man you be’ but I was hurting, hurting really bad, I had just lost my best friend few days to my graduation from secondary school, we had great plans together but now he’s gone and I’m not allowed to cry because I’m a man. I mean, who in the life of Papa Ajasco wrote that rule.

The first and probably the last time I really cried about my dad’s death was two weeks after his burial. I caught myself alone in the house and I cried like a baby. I cried because I had been in a lot of pain, ‘sifia pains’  but masking it all along and the burden was becoming too heavy to carry so I cried uncontrollably. I cried like my life depended on it cos it probably did; but after that I wiped my tears, washed my face and ‘became a man’ again cos I was now the ‘Man of the house’. I have to be strong for my mum and siblings, never to be caught crying or weak (sigh!). It’s been over a decade since his death and I do not think I have completely healed from that hurt and pain bottled up within me (heavy-sigh!)

The truth is that men are not immune to pain but we live in a society that makes speaking up about our pain look like weakness when it is in fact a strength. I believe the whole culture of absorbing issues and not talking about it as men, has done more harm than good and this needs to be changed. Many men are hurt and have never spoken about their hurt to get help, healing or closure because they have been told to 'man up'. Instead they go about hurting people cos ‘hurt people’ hurt other people. Society expects men to bottle up their pain/feelings and then in the same breath complain of African men being unromantic.

My dear, we were trained to be emotionless and it affected how we love too; if you overly express love, they’ll call you a woman, if you make yourself completely vulnerable to your spouse, they’ll say you have been brainwashed, you’re under a spell etc. What then does it mean to be in love if you can’t be vulnerable to your spouse but that’s a topic for another day. It’s almost like the only emotion we are allowed to express is anger, strength and any other emotion that doesn’t make you look vulnerable or weak and this is extremely sad.

I totally believe in being responsible, accepting responsibility for your actions and the consequences of your actions, facing your challenges head on and never backing down, always striving to be the best, making the best of whatever situation you find yourself and always being optimistic but the reality is that MEN ARE NOT SUPERHUMANS! 

To be continued...

Samuel Idiake