Oxygen is overrated

Try holding your breath for 10 seconds… 20 seconds… 40… 50… do you panic? 60, 80, 100… how about now? Panic? If you hold your breath until the only thing you want is to take a breath… then you’ve found the starting point.

Sure, people have noticed that I’m uncomfortable in oxygen-poor environments and that, in public spaces, I’ve reluctantly gasped for air. But I’ve convinced myself that it’s not the lack of oxygen that’s the problem. Because oxygen is overrated.

For almost my entire life, I’ve been stuck in the oxygen-poor world of masculine norms.

What does it do to you when you refuse to accept that you can’t breathe? What does it do to you to live in that panic?

And THERE it is… my constant companion… the voice in my head that wants to keep talking until the air is so thin it feels like breathing through a straw.

— Damn, do you have to be so dramatic!

It doesn’t have the same power it once did, but I still pause for a moment and consider toning it down. Portraying a more composed picture of what I’ve been through—and clearly am still going through.

— Can’t breathe… bah!

It’s the same voice that shows up when I put on a bike helmet. Or when someone won’t yield even though I have the right of way.

It’s the same voice that tells me it’s weak to apologize. The same voice that, with its deafening silence and paralyzing shaming, makes me choose anger over sadness.

It’s not as dominant anymore, but it’s there. I don’t believe what it says… but I listen. I want nothing more than to free myself from it, but it refuses to release me from its condescending iron grip.

Every day I have to choose.

— Are you going to be a man, or are you going to live in some damn pink feminist bubble?

At least now I can put on a bike helmet… sometimes. I can use lip balm… most of the time. I can be vulnerable, but selectively.

I’m still limited, marginalized. I’m not free, but I know what freedom looks like—and I want to get there.

— Oh my God! Are you going to start writing some damn sentimental goo about MEN being “the road to freedom”? HAHAHA! PATHETIC.

I don’t believe what the voice says… but I listen. The difference is that now I choose to try to be true to myself anyway. To try to expose myself by standing in the middle of the room and loudly gasping for air with tears caught in my throat. And I’ve found a community where people, without judging or questioning, give me the oxygen I so desperately need.

The first time I came into contact with MÄN was during a members’ weekend in Malmö. I was burned out and looking for a place where I could do a work-training placement. With some resistance, I made my way there—but it didn’t take long before I felt something I had never felt before in larger settings.

Room to breathe.

Cirrous Naraghi, alternate member of the board of MÄN