THE SOFT MAN

Name: THE SOFT MAN
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gkpogli803

Young Adult | Ongoing

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Growing up as a boy, we were taught silence before we ever learned language. It was in the way our fathers flinched when we cried, the way teachers barked when our voices trembled, the way older boys laughed when we said we were afraid. Somewhere between scraped knees and broken hearts, we were taught to swallow pain, to bury sadness so deep that even we forgot where we put it. We learned that the phrase "I'm alright" wasn't a truth-it was a uniform. Something you wore to look presentable to the world, even if your soul was in shambles. It didn't matter what was going on inside. The world only cared about the outside: strong jaw, firm grip, dry eyes. No one ever taught us how to say, "I'm scared." Or "I'm tired." Or "I need help." Instead, we were told that a man doesn't look like his problems. That real men suffer in silence. That we shouldn't show it-not the hurt, not the confusion, not the heartbreak. "Be a man," they said, and what they meant was: "Don't feel. Don't cry. Don't talk." And so we grew up learning to smile with cracked lips and hollow eyes. We mastered the art of laughing through pain, of working through grief, of leading while bleeding. We became men who couldn't mourn their losses properly. Men who went to work the morning after burying a parent. Men who paid school fees with trembling hands and came home to children who would never know how much they sacrificed. We became men who sat silently in rooms full of people, screaming inside but smiling outside. Men who were praised for being "strong," but who were quietly dying from the weight of being everything for everyone and nothing for themselves. We were told vulnerability was a luxury we couldn't afford. That softness was dangerous. That emotions were feminine. That to feel deeply was to fail masculinity. And yet-how deeply we felt. We felt it when we watched our mothers cry behind closed doors. When we were scolded for hugging our fathers too long. When we wanted to talk, but had no one who would listen without judgment. We carried it. All of it. Until some of us broke. And some of us turned cold. And some of us just vanished behind our own silence. But the truth is: we were never machines. We were boys who became men too quickly. Boys who never got to be soft. Boys who were taught to harden before they could heal. Now, as men, we must unlearn. We must tell the younger ones: It's okay to say "I'm not alright." It's okay to cry. It's okay to feel. It's okay to be a man and be soft. Because softness is not weakness. It is survival. It is truth. It is strength in its most honest form.

Family Modern

Chapter 9 REBUILDING THE MAN

06-06 15:54

Chapter 1 THE MASK

The sun was already high in the Lagos sky when Emeka adjusted his tie and closed the door of his black Toyota Camry. The city buzzed with life-hawkers shouting, cars honking, people weaving through traffic as though there were no laws. But inside Emeka, it was all silence. There was no buzz. No spark. Just the heaviness of performance.

He had become an actor. Every smile was rehearsed, every gesture calculated. He wore his masculinity like armor-polished, thick, and suffocating. To the world, Emeka was the perfect man: a successful banker, a father of two, and the husband of a beautiful, eloquent woman. But behind closed doors, he was a prisoner to expectations that crushed his spirit.

His wife, Ijeoma, was everything society celebrated: articulate, attractive, accomplished. But behind her charming exterior was a woman who knew how to wound with words and freeze a man with silence. Emeka never imagined that emotional abuse could be so insidious, so difficult to explain. After all, who would believe him? A man-abused?

He remembered the night he cried for the first time in years. He had come home late from a stressful day, only to be met with accusations. "Where have you been?" Ijeoma asked. Not with worry, but suspicion. "You men are all the same. Maybe I should stop wasting my beauty on you."

That night, as he curled on the edge of the bed, tears slipped silently down his cheeks. He wept into the pillow, muffling the sound so his children wouldn't hear. But even in that moment, a part of him felt ashamed. Men don't cry. Men don't break. Men endure.