No One Taught Me How to Be a Man—So I Became a Fire Instead

I didn’t have a father.
Not really.
I had temp roles.
Figures.
Shadows with voices that sometimes sounded like love and other times sounded like fear.

No one taught me how to be a man.
So I became a fire instead.

Loud.
Uncontrollable.
Impressive from a distance.
Dangerous up close.

I learned masculinity through volume.

Through fists punching walls.
Through beer bottles and slurred apologies.
Through the rule that if you cry, you lose.

So I taught myself not to feel.
And when the feelings came anyway—
I burned them.
Turned them into anger.
Into charm.
Into overperformance.

I wasn’t strong.
I was hot.
And people mistook that for power.

No one taught me what strength really was.

Not the quiet kind.
Not the patient kind.
Not the kind that holds boundaries instead of breaking them.

I thought being a man meant being undefeated.

So when I started to fail—
at love,
at trust,
at control—
I didn’t soften.

I ignited.

What they got wrong is thinking I wanted to hurt people.

I didn’t.
But fire doesn’t care where it spreads once it starts.

And I became so used to burning
that I forgot I had a choice.

Forgot that you can be seen without setting the room on fire.

I’ve spent years trying to unlearn the flame.

Learning to speak before I react.
To sit in shame without turning it into a weapon.
To stop measuring manhood by who stays afraid of me.

Some days I still fail.

Some days the fire still rises in my throat.
But now—
I write instead of explode.
I listen instead of conquer.
I cry without apologising for it.

I don’t want to be feared anymore.

READ This Isn’t a Redemption Arc. It’s a Resurrection.

I want to be known.

I never had the map.

But I’m building one now.

And it’s written in ash,
in letters,
in silence I no longer fear.

I wasn’t made to burn forever.