#social preassure
Don’t Blame Yourself or Feel Pressured…
For Staying in the Closet to Feel Safe
Going against the norms of society is not an easy thing to do. Society itself pressures you to be Normal and fit in when they see your body and relate with you. This gender binary, only men and women, is deeply ingrained in our society, taught at a young age. Men wear men’s clothes and Women wear women’s clothes. The clothes should not be mixed, or men wearing women’s clothes or women wearing men’s clothes. Hair styles, jewelry and makeup are part of that social conditioning for normality of gender conformity.
Even those who find they are not heterosexual, feel they are gay may find resistance, who you’re attracted to. So trying to stay safe and not reveal yourself, step outside the box of society norms, or expectations, is often preferred.
How you feel is valid. Just because others close to you don’t relate does not invalidate your feelings. The differences in your gender identity, who you wish to project as, or who you’re attracted to is not for others to judge you by. You should be able to take the time to discover who you are without prejudice by those around you or society at large. But it’s not a perfect world. We must be careful who to trust with your feelings.
I personally wish we could all wear the clothes, grow our hair, wear the jewelry, or wear makeup at any age, that we prefer and project who we feel we are without ridicule. Those who raise us with all these fears, these beliefs, inflict some trauma, can have long lasting effects on how we walk our paths in life for decades.
We badly want to be our true selves but our past holds us back. Society then taught, helped mold our mask that has become like armor. And current society intolerance helps reinforce those fears. The desire to feel safe overrides our desire to breakout of our mask and be who we truly are. And that has more consequences and damage to untangle later in life.
So be patient with many of us from the early days, and in less tolerant places, who stayed, or stay, in the closet to feel safe. There have been great strides, many good steps forward, to be a more tolerant society and learn from its mistakes in some places. But I still remember how it was and the intolerance of those times. I do see some reversing, a step back, of our progress.
You’ll know in your heart when it is right and a time for you to make your move. Don’t be burdened by what you lost in the past and by the trauma of what you felt. Don’t let it be a burden you drag with you of what could have been. Let it all go as you slowly disassemble that mask you carefully crafted. Forgive yourself and others and look forward and not back.
Everyday brings new hope and a chance to shine your light to the world to make it a better place with your presence in it.
