Because You're a Man

Screaming. All I heard was screaming. The banging of my sister’s feet filled the kitchen. Jerking my attention away from the television, I see it. I see its beady eyes, menacing green claws, and sharp looking abdomen that held its large shiny wings. At seven years of age, fight was not an option; so flight kicked in. Dashing up the stairs, not far behind my sisters we run to the one safe space we know. Our parents’ closet. Rushing in, slamming the door behind us, we try  to catch our breath and our sanity. We had just seen an alien. Right in the middle of our kitchen. My sisters turned around, puzzled to see me. My younger sister, now able to speak again, chimes, “Kill it!” But, Why me? What makes me any different or more qualified to fight a beast such as that than you? Really, what I said was “What! Why me?” and the next thing to fall through my older sister's lips, blew through my ear, and suctioned itself into my brain “Because you’re a man”. 
Soon, after our parents arrived home, we found out that the scary alien was actually just a praying mantis. A harmless creature, but as young naive kids, we didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know it at the time, but because I was a man, I was expected to be brave all the time. So when our house was invaded, it was me who my sisters expected to save them. To my sisters, I was a different person coming out of that closet than the one who ran in. To them, I was no longer seen as their brother, or as a boy at all. And now I wasn’t worthy to be called a man. My one identity that I knew at the time was stripped away.
From then on, I became more aware of the boxes I was being forced into against my will. And it reached far more than not being brave enough. For example, my mother pierced my right ear at the age of one; it is common for Puerto Rican men to have their ears pierced, but I didn't grow up in Puerto Rico. I grew up in North Syracuse, New York. A predominantly white community. So the other boys in my class never understood why a boy would ever want to wear a shiny black diamond on his ear. Not only did I wear an earring, but as a kid, one of my habits was licking my lips too often, and a red ring would form around them. To combat this issue, I started to wear the same red ChapStick cherry lip balm that my mother used. I never thought anything of it, but when I pulled it out during recess, everyone thought I was applying lipstick.
Little things like that fueled a child's urge to tease. The other boys took it, and ran miles. Calling me every slur they heard on tv when they saw a man act feminine. Gay, fag, sissy, pansy, homo, queer. I even once overheard my teacher refer to me as a “Possible tranny” to another teacher when getting a drink of water from the fountain that was near her classroom; her door was wide open. 
It wasn’t until highschool where my gender identity crisis subsided. It is true when they say high school is the place where children truly find themselves. Being able to see the vast amount of kids my school housed, and the immense number of personalities, I learned just what being a man meant. Punching through the double taped boxes I was constrained by, I now know that a man can be afraid, a man can have feelings, a man can wear earrings, and a man can have chapped lips. But how do I know this? Because I am a man. But I still might not kill a praying mantis.