Transphobic rhetoric has ruined my life
Transphobic rhetoric has ruined my life
For the past 4 years, I have poured everything I have into my passion as a professional wrestling referee. There's not much money in it, but I've dreamed about making it to one of the larger national companies and this year all my work was finally start to pay off with being booked in Vegas during WrestleMania week and being booked for several large arena shows.
I'm also trans.
Now I find myself in a situation where interstate travel in the US is becoming more dangerous by the day. I am finding myself having to check legislation multiple times a week to see what new laws have been passed and how they could affect me. When it's illegal for you to use the proper bathroom without going to jail (and getting put in with the wrong population on top of it), it becomes impossible that drive the hundreds of miles through these states to where I'm booked.
After countless hours on the road and thousands upon thousands of dollars invested, I'm now finding my dream, which seemed obtainable just a few months ago, being ripped away from me simply because of what I am. I am also losing my entire social and support circle as I have literally no one locally in my life (extremely small town).
American dream my ass. Only if you're cis-het white. I've not been able to stop crying and I just don't care to keep going anymore. In wrestling or life.
I am cis het white. I come from one of the worst of backgrounds. I'm an atheist that used to be a very active Jehovah's Witness. That life is simply not who I am and I have to mask who I am around family and any old friends. I tried to run away from it and make my own way in life, but I was unlucky. I ended up physically disabled due to someone else's moment of poor judgement 11 years ago.
My duality has been a part of me since I was 16 in high school. I fell head over heels for a "worldly" girl. At various points in my life I played the role my family expected. I was a "pioneer" for awhile and was on a path to working at the headquarters of Witnesses they call Bethel. I was never happy in those circumstances. I felt like I was surrounded by idiots. I tried to convince myself that these people must have other interests and depth that they didn't wish to talk about with me for whatever reason and that I should not pry. It took 30 years of my life to finally accept that none of them had any other interests and my initial read was dead on perfect.
I have always felt odd because stuff just makes sense to me. I'm extremely conceptually abstracted in functional thought. There are a couple of types of people that cannot understand how I think and reason; how abstract functional thought works. These types of people also misunderstand my fundamental motivations and internal disposition. Unfortunately for me, these personality types are also the most common in general. I'm often thought of as arrogant and a know-it-all. Internally I am extremely curious in a huge number of spaces but I do not think in terms of right or wrong. Everything to me is a statistical probability and work in progress like situation. I don't mind being wrong and actually want to know when that is the case. I don't care about who is right or wrong. I only care about why something is right or wrong in ways that I can intuitively ground in what I have observed in similar and adjacent spaces.
All personalities are tradeoffs of strengths and weaknesses. My weakness is my emotional depth. I don't know myself very well. My emotions are totally disconnected from my default frame of thought. This disconnect has made me vulnerable to people that are narcissistic or sadistic.
So when I am with non-Witnesses I largely try to mask who I am behind a layer of protection to avoid people that fundamentally do not understand me. Then I am wearing another mask around Witnesses that is a little more elaborate. This is probably part of what drives me to compartmentalize and partition off my various hobby interests and curiosities. This is just part of how I was raised. It is my normal to wear a mask and become who I need to be when I need them. If I took off my mask right now around my family and acted like my true self, and especially pursued the kind of sexual relationship I need, I would find myself homeless and dead in a gutter on a cold rainy night. I wear the mask of survival and make the best of the opportunities I have in life. I don't think it is fair or just, but so far it beats the alternative. I'm mimicking nature. Peacocks do not always display their full plumage.
I don't believe anyone should be required to become someone they are not. In a perfect world, we would all be whomever we choose. But most of us are wage slaves and accept that mask as normal. Many that are not, wear the mask of wage slaver. Some wear both.
Whatever mask you chose to wear, know that you are loved without condition by at least one internet stranger.
The things that have helped me most are:
- only worry about the things you can change because everything else is a waste of time
- things can always get worse until they can't and then nothing else matters, so appreciate whatever you can right now
- no permanent solutions to temporary problems are allowed
I hope that helps.