Pro wrestling is real and gender is fake. Or is it, gender is real, and pro wrestling is fake? I go back and forth with this, but each statement can be true, right? I came out as transgender two years ago in the middle of a wrestling ring at my own show, something I only partially understood the weight of at the time, and proudly declared the former. I think about this a lot, because I don’t know that I would exist in the same way I do today had I not been given the gift of the professional wrestling community. My identity was always my own mystery to solve, but wrestling gave me the roadmap.

Pro wrestling didn’t make me trans, but that might sell on a t-shirt. Wrestling guided me to a place that had always existed, somewhere that could only ever be made obvious by this particular art form, and no others. At the risk of catching old-school ire, I’ll tell you that the magic ingredient in all this is what we call the “kayfabe.”

Kayfabe is the blurry line in professional wrestling between what is real, what is acting, and what exactly is a little bit of both. Think about the concept of the fourth wall in film and theatre, but strip away any semblance of a wall dividing a world between yourself and a performer, and there it is. The kayfabe invites us to play make believe, and will something into existence if we so choose it.

To exist in the professional wrestling world is to exist in multiple universes, each with their own set of stories and rules and expectations for how individuals might behave. One performers’ superpower in one such universe might simply be a finishing move in another. Two dear friends might dig up the rot and hatred they could have for each other in another realm, and put those feelings on full display through a sport that is intrinsically violent, and we never doubt them.

Years ago I worked as a preschool teacher and saw the exact same suspension of disbelief out of small children that I see in two wrestlers in the middle of the ring. The same look that a grown man gets in his eye when he’s fully bought into a match is the same look a child gets when she declares we’ve time traveled. Play is good! Playing believe and pretend doesn’t mean that these places are fake, just kind of… nebulous. It’s how humans evolved and learned how to exist in the same space, and it’s how as children, we process the things that scare us the most. I was very, very scared.

The indie scene felt like the only place for me to try on every identity presentation I could ever dream up, but without the scrutiny that comes with the “real” world. I delayed transition and twisted my hands for years because of how hyper-grounded in “reality” I wanted to be. I wanted to be taken seriously, and that felt impossible when I was still living in the town I became an adult in, around respected older friends who had already seen me stumble through my 20s. To play with my name, experiment with pronouns, and explore my “look” (oof) was so outside the realm of possibility, that I never considered it as a viable option. Gender realizations require play, and I had decided that this was for babies.

At the time, I was a ring announcer for NOVA Pro, and I’d already established myself as a capital W Woman, harkening back to my high school days where I won pageants and tried for the cheerleading team. Titties were out, because that’s what girls do! Makeup was flawless, because that’s what girls do! In a gymnasium full of mostly men, I wanted to wield femininity as both a weapon and sweet, sticky honey. If I pulled back on that power, what else would there be to protect me? Remember all those jokes at the start of the pop feminist revival of the early 2010s about how applying cosmetics was like applying “war paint?” It didn’t feel like a joke to me when I put on a costume that I wanted to pass off as my face, my aesthetic. I was tired of carrying all that armor around, but I didn’t know where to store it all.

I wish I could tell you I had an a-ha moment. What I’ve learned is that for many transgender people, the a-ha moments are drips of water that eventually tip the cup. What I did know is that I was in a space that was as safe as any space could be, and it gave me the courage to finally let myself play. I know we don’t look to indie wrestling as a place of safety, but for this purpose, it was everything to me. These were people whose life work included balancing multiple identities and personalities, and adapting quickly when someone else changed their own. That’s not to say bigotry doesn’t exist; it takes a quick scroll through social media to see some of the worst and loudest, but those people aren’t a part of the community that me and mine have built. They don’t understand how to play and manifest their own reality, but we do it every day.

I finally made a choice. After decades of feeling like a porcelain figurine trying to do all in my power to play it safe, I jumped in headfirst with transition, with no regard for pleasing others, all the while using the wrestling community as my mirror. It was wrestlers and fans who used my true name with consistency, who put in the most effort to adhere to chosen pronouns. It was the courage of wrestlers who finally started to own their own queerness that helped me see the depth in mine. The person I wanted to be stopped being a persona that I was experimenting with, and was finally exposed as who I’ve been all along.

Pro wrestling didn’t save my life, but it did create a new one.

Log on to wrestling Twitter and you’ll find a thousand people who will tell you wrestling made them who they are. I don’t mean to suggest I might be a little less loud, a little less confident had I never transitioned. What I mean to say is that I could have settled into the wrong universe, comfortable and playing by the cisgender rulebook. Maybe that person would be happy, in their, or in her, own way, but I don’t think so. In this place, there is joy. There is the kind of flexibility and fluidity that we all deserve. They’re all true believers, and that is what made me real.

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