Boys Don’t Break -But I Did-

They say boys don’t cry. They say it like a promise. Like strength is stitched in our skin at birth and weakness is something you have to unzip your chest to find. I was eight when I learned that sadness had a gender. That girls get tissues, and boys get told to “tough it out.” That scraped knees get band-aids, but broken hearts? Those just get buried under “man up” and “you’ll be fine.” I was twelve when my dad said, “Stop acting like a girl.” Like emotions were diseases and I’d caught one. So I stopped. Stopped crying. Stopped talking. Stopped needing anything that made me look soft. Because being soft felt like being disposable. And you wonder why boys break things before they break down? Why fists meet walls before feelings meet words? We are taught to bottle it up— but no one tells you what happens when the pressure hits the glass ceiling of your skull. I walk hallways with a smile that’s a lie. Teachers don’t ask. Friends don’t see. And the counselor? Too busy with the loud kids, the girls who cry pretty in bathrooms. My silence doesn’t make a scene. It just echoes. Some nights I scream into pillows so I don’t have to apologize for having a voice. But no one sees bruises when they’re on the inside. No one asks if you're okay when your mask fits perfectly. And I want to tell you— depression wears cologne too. Anxiety knows how to laugh at jokes. Panic attacks can come after touchdowns and straight A’s. I want to scream: Check on your boys. Check on the ones who always say, “I’m good.” Check on the ones whose humor hits too hard, too fast, like they’re trying to dodge their own thoughts. Because we are drowning in plain sight. We are falling but our hands look like fists, so no one thinks to catch us. We are breaking in ways that look like silence. And silence doesn’t make noise until it’s too late.