I have a face I no longer recognise. A scar that is not mine, yet it tells a story only I can carry. My voice is swallowed at family gatherings. My laughter is borrowed. My joy restrained. I stand, and yet I am invisible, like a shadow in a house that never truly belonged to me.
She cooks. She cleans. She bows. She smiles. She prays. She gives, and still it is never enough. And when it is not, the blame lands on me. I am told I am not enough. I am told I am weak. I am told I am not a man.
And I want to scream.
Because they do not see what we carry. They do not see the weight of being silent in a cage disguised as love. They do not see the debt of history we inherit from mothers, aunties, wives who were broken before us, whose own pain now lances through their words, through the children they claim to raise, through the love they withhold.
I feel it. I feel the sorrow in men. I feel it as a pulse beneath my ribs, a constant vibration of despair, a heaviness no words can lift. And sometimes I cannot comprehend it. Sometimes I do not understand why love must come with chains, why care can hide under cruelty, why smiles can mask such unbearable misery.
Because sometimes, it is a child's fault. Sometimes, it is a man's fault. Sometimes, it is nothing and everything all at once. I have seen women hate their own children for mistakes they did not make. I have seen marriages become cages, smiles becoming masks, laughter hiding suffocating despair. And when they speak to their friends, they laugh about it, while we drown quietly in the weight of their glee.
Words slice deeper than knives. I have been cut, not once, but every day. Arguments that twist my past into weapons, accusations that would break another man. I have lived the horror of being called less than human, while carrying a body and spirit meant to love. I have prayed for forgiveness, prayed for storms to pass, prayed that the rage inside me does not spill over and destroy the very things I care about. And still, I am left with scars, reminders of battles I did not start yet must survive.
I have had to lie to calm the storms. Tell her I found work, pretend that my silence is peace, hide the fact that I am drowning inside. At gatherings, my voice is as quiet as a grave. I am a man who cannot be seen. I am human, yes, but they do not see the humanity. They see weakness. They see failure. They see a vessel meant to hold all their disappointments.
And the children. The children. The way they become shields, pawns, messengers of pain. I watch them carry their mother's resentment, their mother's anger, the frustration she could not speak to me, and it breaks something inside me every time. I see them and I see myself. The weight of inherited pain, the inheritance of anger, and I wonder how much a man is supposed to endure before he cracks completely.
Even simple kindness becomes unbearable. A smile from a stranger, a hand held lightly, a word spoken softly, it undoes me. I crumble on my knees in tears because I have never been allowed to accept it without guilt, without fear, without the thought that it will be twisted into another weapon against me.
And still, I walk. Scarred, bleeding, unheard. I bear the sorrow of men no one listens to. I carry the rage that has nowhere to go. I carry the love that remains unclaimed. I carry the weight of generations, of histories I never asked for.
And yet I survive. Because if I do not, who will tell the story of what it is to be trapped behind expectations, behind scars, behind Cinderella masks with horns sharpened on the edges of hurt and unhealed history?
I am a man who cries in silence. I am a man who smiles while dying inside. I am a man who prays for mercy, for justice, for peace, for a world that sees the truth of what it is to live in cages built by the very hands that were meant to love us.
And I walk.
I am a man who is alone.