| As I grow older, I find it harder to cry when I have witnessed a gross accident or seen a dead person, no matter how close that friend was, except if they are one of my closest family. At times I even cry because of the fact that I can't cry when I've lost a friend or a cousin. I cry because I'm angry at my inability to cry, not because I want to get rid of the hurt swelling up inside me. The only time I cry is when someone is dumping me, or when I get rejected by the lady of my dreams.
I have asked myself a million times what the reason for this is. Before, I used to cry when I saw a friend cut by a splinter of glass whilst playing in the fields. I would cry when my uncle or cousins were leaving either to a faraway school or place of work, because I couldn't stomach the fact that I wasn't going to see them for a long time. And funny enough, the longest it would be, would be two to three months.
I cried the first time I watched Titanic, and I got scared the first time I watched Maximum Overdrive. I got such a fright when I witnessed an accident, I would get nightmares for a week. I would run away from a spot where a dead person was said to have been found or when someone was run over by a car. I couldn't come close to an accident scene - blood would scare my guts to hell. This was when I was still staying in the rural areas or in small towns like Mt Frere and Ngcobo, or when I was still staying at the Police Camp in Mthatha or at Mbuqe Extension. The day I returned from initiation school was the day my feelings left me. The moment I passed my matric and went on to tertiary, that was the day my emotions left me. At that time I couldn't be seen kissing my mom goodbye after she'd dropped me at the Technikon. I actually asked her to stop dropping me and picking me up because the other students were calling me "mama's baby". I couldn't even get laid, because I was seen as this young man not fit enough to be called a real man or to drink beer and screw whichever girl had loose panties and skirts on.
Then I started rebelling at home, didn't stick to my curfew times, slept out whenever I felt like doing so. I would come home as drunk as if that very same beer had been fermented inside my body. I screwed each and every person who was willing to open up her legs and receive me. I bedded more women than I can count, giving me the label of being a playboy (or toyboy). I would sleep with sisters, cousins and friends, as long as they were not relatives of mine, just to showcase my so called "manhood". I did all this just to prove that I was a man. I stopped crying just to prove that the teachings from my elder brothers and from the entire male folk were getting through to me.
That is when I started having uncontrollable anger bursts. That is when I started to be edgy and wanted everything to go my way, because the whole nation was sitting on my shoulders and others were watching my every step, checking if I was still intact in my promises of behaving like a man. Screw that!!
Damn all those who think that being a man is all about not crying, being a bully, being insensitive, not showing your true feelings, hiding behind a macho face though you know that deep inside you are so hurt your heart is shattered into a million pieces. Men, when are we going to stop indoctrinating our young boys with nonsense? When are we going to tell them that crying is the best remedy for heartache? When are we going to face reality and tell our children that opening up with their problems lead to happiness instead of destruction? How many women, compared with men, suffer from a stroke or from hypertension, nervous breakdowns or psychological disorders that show when one is either working or having a family? When are we going to stop killing our nation by creating cold-blooded monsters that don't have even a drop of tears, let alone emotions and feelings?
Last week I witnessed an accident, and the driver of that car was in very bad shape. After assisting at the scene, as the accident had happened in front of me, I went on my way as if nothing had happened. I didn't know how I felt, I was just numb, and at some stage I forced myself to think about the accident so that I could identify the proper way to feel after experiencing such a tragedy. All my efforts were in vain. My colleagues had nightmares, but I experienced nothing. I just had minor flashbacks for the next two hours after the accident, but after that I just felt nothing. That's so very inhumane. No human being in his or her right mind could stomach what I saw, but because I had allowed people to indoctrinate me with shitty ideas of manhood, it just registered as one of those things that happen.
Are we so used to death, as men, that we have exhausted all our god-given emotions and feelings? Are we so insensitive that things just bounce off us like rays bouncing off a mirror? Let us teach the male child that to be man enough means that he should be able to cry when there is a need to. He should be able to be shocked without fearing that he'll be labelled a chicken. He should be able to show affection without fear of being discriminated against and labelled a "moffie".
Times have changed, and so should we.
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I am Zonwabele Blackie Tshayana, born in Cape Town and bred in Ngcobo,
in the Eastern Cape. I am an aspiring poet whose work has not been
published though I am in the process of finding ways to hook up with
publishers. This is an enormous task in this province, since we have a
few publishing houses. Currently, I am working in the HIV/AIDS sector,
as a health promoter and as an ambassador for Positive Living. This
gives me pleasure, for I can contribute positively in the fight against
HIV, and while I'm doing that, share my personal experiences of living
with the virus.
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