Too Big to Fail
You probably know my name, my face, and my story. You may at some point looked up to me. That’s fine. I sought out a role as a leader in the community for a reason. I thought I could help, and people tell me I have succeeded. Researchers tell me their studies keep coming back with the same result; study participants keep saying the group that I somehow ended up leading saved their lives.
I’m glad I could help people.
The problem is I can’t even save myself.
For all the shiny happy people rhetoric, my life is a shambles. My job leaves me tired and depressed. My partner and I are staying together for the kids. Financially we are a smoldering crater of debt, and I can’t find a way to pay for medical expenses. I cry myself to sleep in my now empty bed several times a week. Every night when I got to sleep, and every morning when I wake up, the empty divot next to me is a glaring indictment of my failure at the thing that meant the most to me.
I’m trapped. Ethically I can’t justify doing anything other than what I am doing. What I am doing is killing myself slowly. When I was in the closet, I suffered to keep others happy. I came out of the closet, and nothing has fundamentally changed.
I get to the end of each week zombified from the effort of trying to meet the obligations of a 42 hour work week, doing everything expected of me to support the kids, cook, clean, exercise regularly, save the lives of people in even worse situations, and find a moment in the evening to put some effort into the ashes of our relationship. By Friday, I am usually two days behind on sleep.
It doesn’t matter, I am expected to be the one who gets up at the same time as the children on the weekends.
I love my therapist, but we have reached an impasse. How many times can I say I am flailing about, looking for some way, any way, to improve my situation? How many times can I say I am tired and depressed? How many times can I say that I don’t know what to do, or that my flailing is as close as I get to hope on a day to day basis? How many times can I hear her say that I should just continue to do the right thing?
I can’t quit. My partner hasn’t been able to find full time work a very long time. The children need me. The people in the queer community I am leading look to me for strength, hope, and the chance I might get them to the promised land.
I can’t admit weakness. The carefully constructed image of strength I project doesn’t allow it. Losing that image will not further the interests of the people looking up to me. I know how important having role models is to having hope for your own future.
People always assume that the life of a “leader” is easier than theirs somehow. It’s not. It’s messy. It’s exhausting emotionally and physically. It hurts. A lot.
Most of all, for all the thousands of people who think they know me, where I live is a very lonely and desolate place, full of quiet desperation, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Does it get better? Not yet. But I’ll let you know when I get there.
There is a great deal of racket over Beyonce recently; of her unwillingness to let photographers capture her at moments when she might not look her best, at her management demanding bad photos of her be removed from websites, at her asking fans never to post videos online when she falls on stage. Why? Because, as a role model, she is showing others that the only way to be amazing and fierce and such is to be some version of perfect. Alternately, there is a great deal of love for artists like Ke$ha; someone who is quite open about her struggles, her fears, and her mistakes, someone who now has a camera crew showing this on MTV. Why? Because people love and relate to those who are like them and who survive just the same.
I don’t live in your house, I don’t sleep in your bed, I don’t walk in your shoes. But I am you; I am someone who struggles to be whom I imagine others want me to be, I am someone who doesn’t like for others to see me when I’m weak, when I’m tired, or when my makeup is smeared. Humans don’t need heroes or martyrs, they need connections to others; they need to feel loved and they need to be able to give love.
If you were honest with those around you, those who admire you and those who know you for reasons outside of your leader status, you wouldn’t be letting them down. You’d be giving them the incredible gift of being allowed to support and love you. When I think of all of the people who haven’t transitioned, who can’t transition, who aren’t in control of their environment, perhaps being able to openly love another soul in need might just be the best gift of all.
i dont really know much about being a role model or having to support a family or marriage. im just a kid. but i /have/ role models and ive had a role model who suffered with depression/mental illness. and who struggled to stay afloat. so i guess what im trying to say is. admitting you’re struggling isn’t weak and i think you’re amazingly strong for all you have to deal with and still working and taking care of your kids and your community. and if you think it might help you i hope you talk to someone. even if its just one person. maybe someone outside of your community so you dont have to worry about maintaining your ‘leader role’ for a bit. but i hope you can show your struggles to your community and they can be even more inspired by your strengths even through suffering and vulnerability, and they can lift you up as you lift them up.
I do understand about feeling lonely. I am alone all the time. So although you have this leadership in the community and people know you, I am on the other end, I have no one. No friends. I am just alone in my little one room cabin every day with my mental illnesses. I feel for what you are going through! I understand when you say you are trapped. I have not been with anyone for ten years, I guess mostly due to the mental stuff. I just am left wondering if I am asexual now. Anyways. I think it is okay to ask for help. We will not think any less of you! Whoever you are, we will love you!! You cannot be everything to everyone. You have to have something left over at the end of the day for yourself. Is there any way you can get help with the kids and just take a day for yourself? Sounds like you need to recharge. Sorry, I just don’t like seeing someone going through this pain. Just don’t worry about being the leader, people won’t think anything about that if you need help for yourself. All of us are human. Things happen, don’t feel guilty or ashamed at all! It would be nice if you could take a day off work and just chill for a bit and get your bearings. Everyone needs to recharge. Good luck to you, and keep in touch, right? Peace.
I’m curious to know how you’re doing now, Anonymous. If your partner (if you’re still together) has found work. If you have found a way to honour your leadership role in a way that is less overwhelming. What things have changed in your life.
I’m out about many things in my life. Queerness, mental health, addiction, spirituality. I have assumed a leadership role in some of these things. I agree, it’s not easy. It was for awhile, when things were going well. People would ask me how I did it, and I would tell them. It was always a simple set of steps. Then I got sick. And I lost any sense of myself as a ‘strong’ person, much less any sort of leader.
Fast-forward nearly five years, to now. I am still out about all of these things. I am still sober – not a single relapse in almost eight years, despite all the bullshit life’s thrown my way. I have been in big periods of hiding during this period. I could no longer lead. I could no longer be strong, for myself or anyone else, although I suppose the definition of strength is weathering through the tough times without giving up, so in truth perhaps I am stronger than I think.
When people ask me now how I do it now, I give a very different answer. What I notice is that many of those people – as someone else mentioned earlier with the Beyonce comment – are terrified because they think that just because what they are doing doesn’t feel or look perfect, they are doing it wrong and doomed to fail, in addition to the other hellish ingredients they may already be juggling. I gently but firmly point out that in fact, nobody is perfect. Everyone flails in their own way. And sometimes the people who show it least, flail the most. The most important thing is being able to talk to someone else when you are flailing, and not feel like you owe so much to so many people that you cannot let your guard down for two seconds. That is a dangerous place to be.
I wish you all the best. I really hope things have improved for you.