Firebreak

 

When a forest burns, firefighters create a break in the line of trees. They create that space so that the fire can’t reach through and take the rest of the woodland. That pause space, that emptiness, quietens the mind of the fire. They know the fire will come and they know the forest will burn, but creating space is a way it might be stopped from consuming everything.

Perhaps you live in a world similar to mine. I grew up in a loving family. I consider myself privileged. I have freedom - any kind you can think of, I’ve never needed to reclaim safety, or earn a sense of equality amongst my peers; a boy who grew into a man, simply. 

Growing up I wasn’t taught about the heat of anger, or who it belonged to, or how to look after it once it appeared. I was a boy who was fine and good. I learned to bury the small things. The small shames. The quiet fears. The subtle sadnesses. I learned to bury them so I could remain fine and good. I hid anger so I could be calm. I taught myself that if anger showed up, I had failed. If I felt heat, I was no longer good and no longer safe to be around. 

I grew up without learning how to listen to the embers that were blowing around inside me. I never learned that they weren’t my fault but they were my responsibility. I learned instead to narrate myself from the inside as lacking. Not loudly, not cruelly at first, but persistently. 

I came to understand myself as unintelligent, unworthy, unable; not because anyone told me I was, but because those were the words that gathered quietly when I was alone. 

Teachers did not say it. Friends did not say it, but I picked it up in the unremarkable moments of a childhood. Slowly the conclusion felt settled, unquestionable, as if it had always been there. The voice did not arrive from outside; it grew from within, shaped by silence, by comparison, by the absence of language for what I was feeling. It was a voice that mistook difficulty for deficiency, emotion for failure, and struggle for proof of inadequacy. 

When something felt hard, I assumed it was because I was not enough. When I felt overwhelmed, I believed it was because others were coping better than I was. I learned to speak to myself in ways I would never speak to a child and because I did not understand where those feelings came from, or what purpose they served, I treated them as evidence rather than signals. The embers burned, and I blamed myself for the heat.

Over the years, the compression of that ignorance led me into the deepest depression, one that would lie to me about my needs, that distorted my sense of who I was and made life feel unliveable.

For me, that pressure turned inward. It collapsed into silence, into exhaustion, into the slow erosion of self-belief. But I’ve come to understand that this is only one direction the fire can take. 

Suppression does not always manifest quietly; sometimes it looks like noise. Sometimes it seeks release rather than disappearance. When we don’t know what we’re feeling, or why we’re feeling it, we look for instruction, not always consciously, but desperately and culture is never short of answers. Especially as young boys, we absorb cues from the people we admire, the voices that promise certainty, strength, or belonging. We are told what men are for, how power should be used, who deserves it, and who does not. When you are lost, when your internal world feels unmanageable, those messages can feel like maps. 

In my own depression, a central wound was the loss of my ability to ask for help. I didn’t know how to say what was wrong, or even what I needed. There was shame in the needing itself; the sense that I should be stronger, more capable, more self-sufficient. That silence closed doors. 

I can see now how, in the absence of empathy or compassion or guidance, that same silence can be filled with something else - something harder, more destructive, giving the fire a way out that harms rather than heals. This may not always in obvious or extreme forms, but in everyday behaviours that make women and girls feel watched, diminished, unsafe, or worse. 

It appears in entitlement, in disregard, in the quiet confidence that one’s presence or desire should be accommodated. It shows up in the need to hold power, in the disregard of boundaries, in the assumption that discomfort belongs to someone else to carry. I don’t write this from my lived experience, nor from ownership of women’s stories or to simplify where harm comes from but from a position of recognition and responsibility as a man. I know this harm exists. I know it is widespread and I know it does not emerge from nowhere. 

When boys are not taught how to understand their inner heat; when anger, shame, fear, and loneliness are left unnamed, they are vulnerable to narratives that frame dominance as strength and control as clarity. This is why silence matters. This is why men talking to boys matters. This is why solidarity is not passive, but practiced. 

The lack of empathy for one’s own fire destroys lives through ignorance of its fuel.

I am a firefighter; we all are. I know the fire will come, you do too. I know when the fire is left it becomes wild and unpredictable. I know empathy and responsibility are water. Perhaps I didn’t start the fire, perhaps I didn’t notice it as it grew, yet I cannot say I don’t see it now. I cannot say it doesn’t belong to me, as it belongs to all of us, all men. I know it’s not opinion, it is true, with statistics I need not quote here.

I write this for my ten-year-old son, and for my ten-year-old self. I write this for the boys who, when asked, reply that they are fine and good. I was fine and good too, believing I didn’t need a map to who I was.

To my ten year old self, I’m sorry it took so long to come back for you. To my ten year old son, I’m here to guide you through shame, loss, fear and sadness. 

And so this is where I ask something of all of us men.

Talk to the boys.

Not just when something goes wrong, but before it does. Dig a little deeper than fine and good. Stay a moment longer when the answer feels rehearsed or automatic. 

Learn to ask questions that don’t demand solutions, only honesty. Learn to sit with answers that are unfinished.

It’s not always easy. Many of us were never spoken to this way. We may have to do this work inwardly first; to learn our own language for heat, for fear, for shame, for love. But that effort matters. It changes what becomes possible.

We are the generations of men who stand with all the possibility of our young ones in our hands. In the wake of harm that women and girls continue to carry, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to write a new narrative. Not through grand declarations, but through small, consistent acts of attention. Through conversations that happen at kitchen tables, on walks home from school, in the quiet moments where trust is built. 

It is never too early, and it is rarely too late. What matters is that they are not left alone with feelings they don’t yet understand. They will be watching closely. It is our role to guide them through this terrain, not with control, not with fear, but with empathy. To help them understand where their feelings come from, what they are trying to do, and how to carry them.

I’ve learnt in these days, weeks, months and years that when everything burns what’s left is possibility. 

If the whole forest burns, it does so to let something new grow in the space that the light could not touch before. I’ve learnt that on the tail of confusion travels clarity, and that grief of the former, is a spring of dexterity. It is the same for both love and hurt. 

No matter the spaces I put between my trees, there will be fire, this much I know. I know sometimes embers are blown across the hinterland and undo the work of clearing, but it is a practice, and one that can be revisited in the next forest and again in the one after that. After the fire, after the ash settles, there is something else - something hopeful.

 Matt Moser-Clark

Artist

United Kingdom

Matt is an artist, designer, and father. He lives and works in Lewes, East Sussex

@mattmoserclark (instagram)

 

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