Blog Post

Gomez, Man Up
"Every day I watch men around me struggle with the burden on concealing their fear"

           Boys are bullied as children for crying and told to "man up." They are told that men don't cry. This is the unfortunate reality for many children feeling as if they need to conceal their suffering, rage, and fear. Even while facing the most difficult times they are told to put on a "mask" and to hold in their pain.
         
           This quote really resinated with me as I was able to make a connection with the book, "A Walk to Remember". A walk to remember is about a boy who is separated from his mother at a young age and left to fend for himself in war stricken Syria. He faces many hardships on his journey but he feels the necessity to hide true emotions. At many points in the story, he is at gun point or running away from gun fire. His fear is consuming him but he feels the burden of becoming a man and choses to not show his pain even after suffering great injuries. His fear ultimately consumes him and makes him paranoid of creating relationships with people. It is only after he gets older and escapes from Syria that he is able to fully recover. But even then, he surpasses the emotions that he felt as a boy to tell the story of how he escaped the war.