i am not a woman
i am not a woman but i identify with crazy women.
the desperate clawing need to feel seen as more than a caregiver, a prop, or extra in another’s play.
i am not a woman but when women say they can’t explain why they want to rip their hair out and scream in someone’s suffocating grip, until they choke the pain out of her, i am her.
when the poets speak of mothers and daughters im reminded that i am my father’s son and my mother’s daughter.
i am his second chance and her outlet.
i receive his criticism and her weakness.
i contribute to mankind the tenderness and poeticism of femininity while maintaining the aggressive indignation of masculinity to my fellow man.
i want to be the real man who doesn’t cry while sobbing gutturally into the arms of my reluctantly betrothed who looked past my barricaded walls and through the window of my indifference.
i want to be the savior and the saved. i want someone to know me without needing to turn away, to see me without needing to shield their melting eyes.
i want the world to know that i carry on my shoulders generations of women who wanted nothing more than to be heard.
my mother is weak, and i’ll never see her as anything but.
because as much as i identify with the crazy woman, i am not her.
i do not have the burden of being perceived as a weak woman, instead as a weak man.
weak men are often excused by their upbringing, by the weaker women in their lives.
and so when i find myself facing a mirror, i turn it upon the mother who i’ll always see as weaker than me.
because i am not her and she is not i.
instead we are fraught together in a hurricane of rage against the strong men who are weaker than any of us expected.
true masculinity lies in weakness, and true femininity lies in strength.
this is why although i’d love to be a crazy woman, i instead find myself under the label of just another one in a line of endlessly weak men.
