This Doesn’t Fit

Confessions of a Late Bloomer Part 15

What I Thought It Meant to Be a Man or a Woman

When I was young, I was told I could be anything.
Do anything.
And I believed it.

For a while.

But then the messaging started to seep in, quiet at first, like a draft under the door.
You know the kind.
The kind that doesn’t shout. It just… shapes.

That women should be small.
Gentle.
Nurturing.
Soft-spoken and agreeable.
Caretakers of everyone but themselves.

That we were supposed to find a man, marry him, have children, and make our lives about family.
And do all of this while staying thin, young, and beautiful.
And that was supposed to be enough.

Men, on the other hand?
They got to be leaders.
Providers.
Decision-makers.
The ones we were meant to defer to.
The ones whose worth wasn’t measured by their waistlines or wrinkle count.
The ones who were never taught to make themselves valuable by being beautiful.

The ones who could wear their age like a banner,
celebrating the lines, the silver, the years,
and call it debonair.

Established.
Distinguished.
Worthy.

I thought a man was supposed to be strong enough to carry the weight of the world.
Confident.
Steady.
Unshakeable.

He was the one who was allowed to take up space.
To move through the world with certainty, without apology.
He was supposed to protect, provide, pursue, and somehow know everything without asking for help.

And if he didn’t?
Well, that wasn’t something we talked about.

There wasn’t a lot of room in the stories I was shown for weakness,
or uncertainty,
or for a man who didn’t already have it all figured out.

Just as there wasn’t room for a woman who wanted to lead, or wanted more than a neat life tucked inside someone else’s.

Well, that is, unless she didn’t care about being called names…

And me?

I noticed that when I stepped into leadership…naturally, effortlessly…there was a subtle shifting in the room. A discomfort. A raised eyebrow. A comment disguised as a compliment:
“You’re kind of intense.”
“You’ve got a lot of opinions.”
“Wow, you’re really assertive, aren’t you?”

Slowly, those words taught me something else.
They taught me that intensity was threatening.
That opinions made you less lovable.
That leadership only looked good on you if you made yourself small enough to not be a bother.

And just like that, I learned the rules.

Not spoken out loud.
Not written down.
Just understood.

Shrink.
Soften.
Make room for someone else to take the lead, preferably a man.

The path was laid out.
A clear course in what it meant to be a woman in a world that worships the ideal and punishes the actual.

I learned that men were supposed to wear blue, and women pink.
That femininity was a dress, and masculinity a stern gaze and a clenched fist.
That to be a man or a woman meant standing on opposite sides of a spectrum, never stepping into the middle ground.

All of it, arbitrary rules dressed up as destiny.
All of it, designed for someone else’s comfort.

We were taught that feminism was a dirty word.
That if a woman dared strive for equality,
she was ungrateful because she was supposed to be cared for, not stand on her own.

A man was taught that any softness made him a pussy.
That anything tender, anything vulnerable, made him less.

But the truth is, it makes him more.
More whole.
More human.
More capable of holding the weight and wonder of both strength and softness at once.

He can be strength without violence.
Tenderness without apology.
Stillness without shame.
Fire without destruction.

But none of that was handed to us easily.
We had to dig for it.
We had to unlearn.

So I tried.
God, I tried.

Tried to want what I was told I should want.
Tried to be what I was told I should be.

A version of femininity that looked better in a magazine spread than it felt in my body.

Eat less.
Smile more.
Work out, but don’t get too muscular.
Be attractive but not too sexual.
Be intelligent but not intimidating.
Be ambitious, but not so ambitious you make anyone uncomfortable.

It was exhausting, trying to be the perfect contradiction.

Meanwhile, everyone around me seemed to move through these expectations like it was second nature.
Like it was comfortable.
Like it fit.

But me?
It felt like stuffing myself into a shape I was never meant to wear.
Like cutting off parts of myself just to be allowed to stay.

I tried to belong.
I tried to disappear the parts of me that didn’t fit neatly into the story.

But belonging at the cost of myself was never going to be enough.

And maybe that’s where the bloom really began, not in the moments I got it “right,” but in the ones I finally said,
“No. This doesn’t fit.”

Because I wasn’t too much.
I just wasn’t meant to fit inside a box.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤