It was a normal night, and I was enjoying my sleep when I heard the rain. Who doesn’t love the sound of falling rain? In my sleep, I felt content—this was going to make my rest even better. But then, the wind picked up, violently strong, the kind that could blow me away if I were outside. Suddenly, the lights went out.

"ECG!" I muttered in my head. The whole place was pitch black, but I didn’t care. I was asleep, and nothing was going to wake me. That is, until I noticed a flicker of light through my window, right in my face. I jolted awake and leaped out of bed.

Thank God the window was burglar-proofed. The lock on the sliding window had been damaged for a while, and the landlord had promised to fix it—but nothing had been done. Fear gripped me, and I began backing away slowly.

“Open the door,” a man’s voice ordered from outside. My heart raced. What if there was someone in the corridor, waiting to pounce the moment I opened the door? Terrified, I started banging on the door and screaming for help. My neighbors rushed out, and the man jumped off my porch and fled.

After that, I couldn’t sleep in my room a neighbor stayed with me because I was too shaken to be alone. I called my dad the next day, and he stayed over for the next night, but then he told me to “be a man.” I reached out to my siblings, and they all said the same—“Be a man.”

I felt stuck. I was scared, and I didn’t know fear had a gender. I called my girlfriend, and she stayed with me that night. She tried to be understanding, but I could sense her frustration. She didn’t outright tell me to “be a man,” but I could feel it in the air.

I just wanted to be vulnerable, to have someone let me be scared without judgment. But it seems there’s no room for a vulnerable man. Society encourages men to open up, but when they do, they’re quickly told to shut up. I get it now—I’ll have to handle this trauma the best way I can because, no matter how scared I am, I still have to “be a man.”