My Fear of Men (If You Can Even Call It Fear)

 

I guess it’s the feeling I get when I perceive this human-being with their attitude; leadership like an alpha in this jungle we call our world. Well, a specific kind of leadership though, one that says “I can have everything I want. Including those to satisfy my needs and desires“. They always think that they’re stronger than us women, but they’re really, mostly, just very reckless and childish. Some are even just stupid. Some stupider than others. But aren’t we all humans like that? Men, women, or those non-binary ones. We’re all the same. Does that mean I hate everyone then? No. I can’t even say I hate men. I have, in fact, many nice guy friends that are so kind, they’re probably kinder than my girlfriends. So, no, I don’t hate men. I just despise those that did me wrong, used me, made me feel disgusted of myself, all those things that happened in my past and the memories where I felt like I could do nothing, made me feel like I’m less than who I really am, that scraped my dignity off of me and the memories, good or bad ones, that get summoned each time I see something or hear, or feel, or remember them. All those memories I buried deep inside of me that I don’t wish to happen again. But sadly, they’re everywhere in this world where I live, where I go, when I think, it’s everywhere.

I’m not a hateful person. I don’t hold grudge against the teacher that used me for three months straight, every day. I counted the times when he did it because I wished the right momentum to bounce out of the moment would’ve come sooner, but three months are the time I had to stay shut and quiet. I lived in fear and anxiety. The same kind of time that reminds me of four years before it happened, when a construction worker forcefully kissed me and tried to have sex with me. I was only nine years old when that happened. Nobody believed me when I told them this story. So, what could I do was to stay quiet, because talking brought nothing but disbelief. 

Somehow I learned that it’s easy to do for men. It’s only the big ones, how about the small assaults they did? Which also, not surprisingly, happened to me. If you count all of them, you’ll get shocked at just how cruel this world could be to somebody.

It’s safe to say that I’m angry at what happened to me. I’m so angry that if something reminds me of it, I won’t be able to breathe, sometimes panic attacks. I don’t hate men, I hate what they did to me and what they could do to me. I'm living with so much anticipation and worries that if a guy comes close to me, my head will be flooded by thoughts of what might happen, of what could go wrong, or what I can hate about them so the power of my resentment can strengthen me and say “no“. Because the last two times that happened with me was due to my kindness and my faith for people. I thought everyone’s kind and that they won’t do me any wrong, which made me go on and said too many “yeses“ that I end up getting used and even nearly raped.

I guess in the end it’s the matter of what I call fear. I remember the time when I’m so afraid of the darkness and ghosts, things I can’t see, the unknown, things that shock me and sudden changes. My “fear“ of men is probably the manifestation of the same fear I always had; the fear of the unknown. It’s unknown what they could do in general. But that applies for everyone and I just have a slightly better faith in women, because I’m the same kind, at least as far as I can tell. But because my past has spoken a lot to me about what I should fear or what bad things that could happen to me, I am probably quite biased in what I fear and what I’m afraid of. Or maybe in the end it never was only one thing that I feared. It’s an accumulation of things; possibilities, memories, thoughts, predictions, prejudice, assumptions, anxiety, fear, and their correlations to one another that happened in such a short time and broke me apart, that made me feel weak but I know, always, that I’m more than my fears and what I face.