Change happens very slowly. You can feel it weighing down on you overtime.

It squeezes you until you can’t take deep breaths anymore. It’s a white entity that gets heavier and heavier until you feel suffocated and start seeing flashing lights. It’s a gloomy creature that rests on your neck and crushes your vocal chords, until your voice crackles and then disappears.

When you least expect it, your eyes lose their shimmer and are replaced by glass with no reflection.

Change happens slowly. But I saw someone change before me in a matter of seconds.

I traced the lines of my doll’s face. I wondered how anyone could draw her eyes so round without messing up. Faint footsteps and rustling interrupted my thoughts. My little cousin stood at the other side of the living room struggling to keep his balance while holding his red box of toys.

“Can I play with you?”

I was ready to yell at him. I enjoyed playing alone because I loved creating individual stories for each of my dolls, and besides, no one else understood how to play along with those stories. But I remembered that he was the only boy in the house. None of his sisters would play with him. They told him boys don’t play with girls. He didn’t seem like he enjoyed playing with his toys alone.

“Yeah, I guess.” I sighed.

He didn’t wait for me to finish my sentence. As soon as he heard yes, he dropped his box and dragged it over to my toys.  I peeked into the box. It was filled with colorful action figures and bulky toy cars: a box of forbidden things. My cousin and I raced the cars, with Barbies inside them, around the house. I enjoyed listening to some of the action figures talk and he enjoyed dressing up the dolls. His action figures didn’t have clothes and my Barbies didn’t have voices. We told each other elaborate back stories about our favorite toys. Two of our dolls were going to rescue Sponge Bob from the Batman, who turned evil.

My uncle walked past the living room. He stopped when he saw the dolls and his son, then he flew across the room and grabbed my cousin by his hair. My uncle dragged him across the living room into the bathroom.

I stood frozen in place. I didn’t move until the screaming stopped. It seemed like it would never stop. I could hear him begging, apologizing, crying…

But it did stop, eventually. My uncle walked past me like I was a piece of nothing. When he was gone, I walked over to the bathroom. His glasses were on the floor and his face was a terribly sad color red.

When he opened his eyes, I could only see the shame and hurt in them.  His eyes welled up in tears.

“Are you okay?”

If I wasn’t paying close attention, I would have missed it. It happened so quickly.

The soft frown turned into pursed lips. His eyes moved from utter sadness to boiling rage. The tears disappeared, but the redness in his eyes didn’t.

He shoved me and I fell back hard against the wall. He ran upstairs. I lay by the wall rubbing my head. The back of my head throbbed. The tears just started trickling down my cheeks.

His eyes, they changed so quickly.

That day, my cousin and I learned if we don’t conform to our gender roles, violence is coming our way. Strong men don’t cry. My cousin learned that the only emotion men are allowed to express is rage.  And I learned that femininity is a sign of weakness. Good women accept abuse silently.

Its strange how quickly society can discipline us and teach us what the norms are. We learn it so quickly and so young that we forget that we once didn’t know anything about gender norms.

Our appearance, behavior, and ability to fit into these norms shape our experience in the world. They shape how the world will treat us.  And if we allow it to happen, the world will crush and break us until we are a distorted image of the norm. And no matter how desperately one tries to fit into any of these categories, no one will ever be able to truly fit inside those tiny coffins.